The Academy Art Museum has announced a new Kittredge-Wilson Speakers Series which will be held on Thursdays at 6 p.m. at the Museum throughout the year. The first lecture in the series will be an Environmental Film Night by speaker Thomas Horton, in conjunction with Midshore Riverkeeper® Conservancy on October 11, 2012, 6 p.m. This event is supported by the Town Creek Foundation in grateful appreciation for Tom Horton’s many years of commitment to the protection and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay. Ticket sales from this lecture will benefit both the Academy Art Museum and the Midshore Riverkeeper® Conservancy.

Horton, a noted environmental storyteller and Bay advocate, will introduce two 20-minute films featuring Chesapeake waters. The films include “Menhaden: The Most Important Fish in the Bay,” an insightful investigation into the Bay’s most essential fishery, and “Let Our Rivers Flow,” an evocative and moving portrait of the history and future of our mid-Shore rivers. Horton covered the Bay for 33 years for the Baltimore Sun and is an author of six books about the Chesapeake. He writes a regular column for the Bay Journal and narrates the feature film, “Let Our Rivers Flow.”

The speaker series continues with a lecture, Catesby, Audubon and the American Wilderness, by Esther Sparks on November 15, 2012, 6 p.m. Esther Sparks will speak on the two artists, Mark Catesby and John James Audubon, both of whom most shaped the popular sense of wildlife in the New World. Burt Kummerow will present, Discovering the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake, on December 13, 2012 at 6 p.m. Kummerow will recount the War of 1812, which occurred in the Chesapeake region and explore the Tidewater world of two centuries past. The presentation coincides with the recent release of his book, “In Full Glory Reflected, Discovering the War of 1812 in the Chesapeake.” On February 28, 2013 at 6 p.m., author Christopher Tilghman, a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, will present The Right-Hand Shore. Tilghman’s life has revolved around his family’s farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His new novel, “The Right-Hand Shore,” follows his acclaimed novel, “Mason’s Retreat,” telling the multigenerational story of a farm on the Eastern Shore modeled after his own. On March 21, 2013 at 6 p.m., Martin Kemp will present a lecture on Leonardo’s Graphic Invention. Leonardo da Vinci reformed every aspect of drawing as a tool for study and invention. His design techniques not only affected the whole course of art but also encompassed almost every method of graphic demonstration in architecture, engineering, the sciences of nature, and mathematics before the advent of X-rays. The series will wrap up with a presentation by Professor David M. Stone, Signed in Blood: Caravaggio’s ‘Beheading of St. John’ and the Knights of Malta, on April 25, 2013. Stone is with the Department of Art History at the University of Delaware and a Trustee with the American Academy in Rome.

The cost for all six lectures is $75 for Museum members and $110 for non-Museum members. Individual lecture tickets are $15 for Museum members and $24 for non-Museum members. For further information, visit www.academyartmuseum.org or call 410-822-2787.