Monet and VeniceMaster ClassIn-Person
Thursday, Jan 22, 2026
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Pkwy
Brooklyn, NY 11238
Our partner, Brooklyn Museum, is hosting this event.
This master class will focus on a fascinating yet underexplored chapter in Claude Monet’s late career: his 1908 trip to Venice. Accompanied by his wife, Alice, the sixty-eight-year-old artist was reluctant to leave his Giverny home and his familiar water lily pond. Although he initially lamented that Venice was “too beautiful to be painted,” he was immediately enchanted by its spectacle, splendor, and atmosphere. Many artists before him had been captivated by Venice, but Monet would renew the familiar image of the historic city, making it his own. Together, we will explore this trip and its significance, revealing how the artist's evocative images of the city and its pearly, vaporous light resonate within his life and oeuvre.
ART, VISUAL ART, ART HISTORY
Lisa Small
Lisa Small is the senior curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum. She first joined the museum in 2011 as curator of exhibitions, and has since curated or co-curated the exhibitions Monet and Venice; It’s Pablomatic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby; and Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley, among many others. Small has also overseen numerous installations of the museum’s European art collection, including most recently Monet to Morisot: The Real and Imagined in European Art. In previous curatorial positions at the American Federation of Arts and the Dahesh Museum, she organized exhibitions including Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection; Gods and Heroes: Masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts; and Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt.