Life and work of women artists at talk in Geneva

The Geneva History Museum will host Ruth Ford and Sylvia Simon at 2 p.m., Saturday, April 5. This program features the life and work of artist Ruth Van Sickle Ford and her friendship with and influence on the featured artist Sylvia Simon, a presentation by Nancy Smith Hopp, author of "Warm Light, Cool Shadows: The Life and Art of Ruth Van Sickle Ford."

Born in 1897, and raised in the Fox River Valley, Ruth Ford graduated in 1918 from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. She continued her studies in Chicago and New York under the tutelage of some of the most respected painters of the time. In 1937, Ford became the president and director of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Pulitzer-prize winning editorial cartoonist Bill Mauldin is but one example of the hundreds of students she nurtured.

Ford was the first woman from Illinois to be invited into the prestigious American Watercolor Society and the first woman artist member of Chicago's renowned Palette & Chisel Academy. In 1948, with architect Bruce Goff, Ruth and her husband, Sam, designed a home studio on Aurora's far west side, called the Round House, that attracted international attention.

The program takes place at the Geneva History Museum, 113 S. Third St., Geneva. Reservations are $10 per person, $5 for Museum Members and can be made at genevahistorycenter.org or at (630) 232-4951.