Fungi and Flesh: William Henry Hunt’s Watercolors and the Politics of Technique

BOWDOIN COLLEGE • September 29, 2026

In 1858, William Henry Hunt painted an extraordinary little watercolor called Fungi, now in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s collection. In this talk, Professor Pamela Fletcher offers a close reading of the painting and its contexts, connecting the materiality of Hunt’s technique to the questions of ecology, pollution, beauty, difference, and vision that shaped both the Victorian world and our own. At Bowdoin College, Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center, Brunswick, September 30, 7:30 pm.