Booking and details
Reserve Your SpotDates Fri, Oct 10, 2025, at 6:30pm
Venue Stuart and Mimi Rose Rare Book and Manuscript Exhibition Hall
Tickets Free; registration requested
Walk-up attendees will be accommodated day of, subject to availability.
Join us for a gallery talk with Elise Ansel as part of Contemporary Art at the Folger, a rotating series that showcases the work of Folger Artist Fellows.
“Old Master” paintings were largely created by men for men. Learn how artist Elise Ansel disrupts this exclusionary viewpoint and creates new ways of looking at and engaging with Henry Fuseli’s 1793 painting Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head, held in the Folger collection.
From eerie witches and apparitions to swirling magic winds, we’ll explore a feminist take on the history of Halloween’s most essential themes.
About the artist
Elise Ansel
Elise Ansel was born and raised in New York City. Ansel received a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University in 1984. While at Brown, she studied art at both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. She worked briefly in the film industry before deciding to make painting her first order medium. Ansel has exhibited her work throughout the United States and in Europe. Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, the Farnsworth Art Museum, NYU Langone, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences. She is represented by Miles McEnery Gallery in New York City, Cadogan Gallery in London and Milan, and Galerie Martina Kaiser in Cologne.
Related
Henry Fuseli's Macbeth painting
This 1793 painting, known as Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head, depicts Macbeth’s second encounter with the witches.
About Folger Institute
The Folger Institute is a center for early modern research at the Folger Shakespeare Library that brings public audiences together with researchers to explore the cultures and legacies of the early modern world. Learn more.