Faculty News: Art History Professor Annie Storr Gives Talk on Ellen Gates Starr

Art Historian and Montserrat College of Art’s Art History Professor Annie Storr will be giving a talk on her research project entitled “Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940): Reintegrating the Artist, the Activist, the Spiritual Seeker and Social Reformer” on Wednesday, January 27 at 11:15 am at 248 Cabot Street in room B-208.

On October 9, 2015, Storr gave this same talk at the Smithsonian Institute Scholars Centers of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art, Victor Building, Washington DC”

Ellen Gates Starr was an internationally recognized book artist, notorious and revered social justice organizer, international traveler, and political and personal partner of Jane Addams. Together, they founded Hull House, in Chicago, a paradigm-shifting social service organization for immigrants and the urban poor.

Regularly described as one of America’s most important under-studied figures of the 20th Century,* Ellen Gates Starr was an internationally recognized book artist, notorious and revered social justice organizer, international traveler, and political and personal partner of Jane Addams. Together, they founded Hull House, in Chicago, a paradigm-shifting social service organization for immigrants and the urban poor. Jane Addams was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for this work, but EGS did not share in the public acclaim. In the background, she engaged in 5 decades of extraordinary service, political insight and personal re-fashioning, including a previously unknown connection to Boston’s North Shore. This talk is part of a larger effort to reintegrate aspects of this extraordinary person, who has been fragments by history.

*This assessment has been made by experts in: Sociology, American History, Women’s History, Urban Studies, Philosophy, Theology, Art History, Fine Arts, Arts Education, Gender Studies and Social Policy, right up to the present day!