Exhibition Opening Reception for Lucasen Brown: Stanza

Lucasen Brown is a painter based in New York City. He graduated with an S.T.M. degree from Yale Divinity School and a certificate from the Institute of Sacred Music in May 2025. In 2020, he graduated from Union Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity. His work has been the subject of eight solo exhibitions and has been included in numerous group exhibitions. It has been reviewed in The New York Times, Artnews, artcritical, The New Criterion, and Hyperallergic. Brown was a visiting scholar and artist at the American Academy in Rome and a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. For over twenty-five years, Brown was co-owner of Tibor de Nagy Gallery where he curated exhibitions and edited publications, including catalogues on the painters and poets of the New York School. Today, Brown works as an art advisor and curator while he pursues chaplaincy. 

Website: www.lucasenbrownpainter.com

Nora Heimann is an art historian with a specialization in modern and contemporary art and critical theory at the intersection of culture, religion, identity, and politics.  She trained at Harvard University (AB), Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art (MA), the Université de Paris, and the CUNY Graduate Center (MA, PhD).   

She has presented her research at national and international fora, including the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); the Musée de l’Armée (Paris), the Musée du Louvre (Paris), and the Fashion Institute of America (New York City).  

Her publications include two books: “Joan of Arc in French Art and Culture (1700-1855)” (2005); and (with L. Coyle) “Joan of Arc: Her Image in France and America” (2006); as well as numerous chapters and articles, including “Spirits, Specters, Saints in the Art of the Great War” (2021); “Spinner or Saint: Context and Meaning in Gauguin’s First Fresco,” (2012); and “The Princess and the Maid of Orléans” (2003). Her current book projects are centered on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and the Meditative Gaze.

Since retiring from a 30 year career as a tenured professor of art history at the Catholic University of America in August 2025, Heimann has sought to deepen her lifelong interest in the intersection of art and faith and to expand her expertise as a scholar, independent curator, and museum educator (with a focus on accessibility) by advancing her theological and pastoral training at Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music (M.Div. anticipated May 2026); and at both Georgetown University (where she completed 1A intensive training  as a clinical pastoral chaplain in summer 2024), and at Fairfield University (where she will begin a two-year training program in Ignatian Spiritual Direction in January 2026).