Cost of Admission: Members FREE; $10 for non-members. Registration is required. Books will be for sale and refreshments will be available immediately following the lecture.

In their most original work yet, Bob and Johanna Titus will discuss their new book, The Hudson River Schools of Art and their Ice Age Origins. They examine how the Hudson Valley’s specific and unique ice-age history had an unexpected consequence: the rise of the Hudson River School of Art, the first truly American school of painting, and also the landscape architecture and literature of the same period in the Hudson Valley. They tell in detail how the landscapes which inspired artists such as Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Frederick Edwin Church and Sanford Gifford were sculpted by glaciers and ice age processes, with specific examples and locations, including places readers can visit today.

Robert and Johanna Titus are retired science professors. Robert taught geology at Hartwick College. Dr. Titus is a paleontologist by training and has done a great deal of professional research on the fossil record of New York State. His books include The Catskills in the Ice Age and The Other Side of Time: Essays by the “Catskill Geologist.” Johanna has taught biology at SUNY Dutchess, with a professional research background in molecular biography. Together, the Tituses have written for newspapers and magazines throughout the region, especially Kaatskill Life Magazine and wrote the book The Hudson Valley in the Ice Age. They lecture frequently on their research.