WINSTON-SALEM, NC.- Reynolda House Museum of American Art presents a lecture by art historian John Hallmark Neff on Tuesday, May 19 at 5:30 p.m. The title of the lecture is "American Idyll: Yankee Artists in Giverny." Admission to the lecture is $5, free to members and students.

The lecture is held in conjunction with the current Reynolda House exhibition, "American Impressions: Selections from the National Academy Museum," on view through June 28, 2009. Reynolda House is the only venue for this exhibition outside of New York.

In his lecture Neff will talk about the young American artists of the late 19th century who traveled to France to study with the French Impressionists. Many of them settled in the village of Giverny in order to study with Claude Monet, and the Hotel Baudy became a central meeting place for these expatriates. Neff will also address the larger context of late 19th and 20th century Impressionism, both French and American, giving close readings of paintings from this period. His collection of images of the village of Giverny and its gardens will further illustrate life in a rural French village and its impact on the artists.

Neff, former director of Reynolda House, is an historian of 19th and 20th century European and American art. He is also the former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Terra Museum of American Art, sister institution to the Terra Foundation's Musée d'Art Américain Giverny.