This year marks the sesquicentennial of the fall of Fort Sumter and the start of the Civil War. Dr. Kevin Avery’s lecture launches Olana’s 2011 exhibition Rally 'round the Flag: Frederic Edwin Church and the Civil War which examines Church’s reaction to the conflict as an artist and how events involving his friends and colleagues affected him personally. With this exhibition, on view in the Evelyn and Maurice Sharp Gallery at Olana from Thursday, May 26 through Sunday, October 30, 2011, Olana is participating in a multiyear commemoration of the war, with related regional and national exhibitions, events, and programs being planned by many institutions. A foldout pamphlet with an essay by Dr. Avery will be available to visitors in the gallery. Kevin J. Avery is a senior research scholar at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and an adjunct professor at Hunter College, City University of New York. His is the author of Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church, catalogue of a 2005 exhibition, and co-orga¬nizer, of “Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford,” mounted by the Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery of Art in 2003- 04. In 2002 he edited and co-authored American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. I. Kevin J. Avery will lecture on Frederic Edwin Church and the Civil War at the Olana Wagon House Education Center on Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is requested. There is a $5.00 per car fee to enter the site on weekend days; members of The Olana Partnership have free access to the site. Please call 518-828-1872, ext. 103 to sign-up. For more information and directions to Olana, visit www.olana.org.