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The Janet Flanner Visiting Artist Series

The Park Tudor Janet Flanner Visiting Artist Series is a vital component of Connecting Classroom, Campus and Community. The series is designed to provide students with exposure to working artists from a wide array of disciplines. Always insightful, these interactions provide an opportunity to meet the artists and learn firsthand about their ideations, inspirations, and techniques. 

About Janet Flanner: Janet Flanner was a member of the Tudor Hall class of 1909, and became well-known as a member of the "Lost Generation" of writers and author of the beloved "Letters from Paris" column in The New Yorker Magazine.

Admission to the Visiting Artist Series is free and open to the public.

View the 2024-25 Janet Flanner Visiting Artist Series Poster

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The Janet Flanner Visiting Artist Series

About Janet Flanner

In a school of many famous alumni, Janet Flanner (Tudor Hall 1909), continues to hold a prominent place. From 1925-1975, she wrote a regular column for the New Yorker Magazine. Her beloved Letters from Paris chronicled the social, cultural and political climate of Paris and beyond.

The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Flanner, founder of Flanner and Buchanan Mortuary, Janet was the first of many members of the Flanner, Buchanan and Keller families to attend Park Tudor. At Tudor Hall she played basketball, was freshman class president, and editor of the Chronicle, for which she wrote a number of creative pieces. Following graduation in 1909, she travelled with her family before enrolling in 1912 at the University of Chicago, leaving two years later. Miss Flanner moved back to Indianapolis and took a job in 1916 as a cinema critic with the Indianapolis Star - becoming the first film critic in the United States. Janet then made her way to Paris, where her letters to her friend Jane Grant, wife of The New Yorker founder Harold Ross, earned her a job as a regular reporter of Paris life for the new magazine.

A member of the "Lost Generation" of writers, Janet was friends with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. She wrote about Picasso, Sir Winston Churchill and, in perhaps her most acclaimed column, a three-part expose in 1936 revealing Adolf Hitler's sinister character.

Even from her writing in the Tudor Hall Chronicle, one can see a resolute, well-spoken, and witty woman who became known as Genet to her readers. As William Shaw, editor of The New Yorker wrote,

Beneath the elegance of her style was the plain speech that went back to her Quaker upbringing in Indiana. Embedded in her enormously sophisticated manner was a Hoosier common sense."

In addition to being a sophisticated writer who captured some of the most iconic personalities of the early 20th century, Janet Flanner also played a crucial role in introducing her contemporaries to new artists in Paris, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, André Gide, Jean Cocteau, and the Ballets Russes. Her early work as a film critic, and art commentator and her lifelong association with creative minds of all artistic disciplines makes the Park Tudor Visiting Artist Series a fitting way to commemorate and celebrate Janet's legacy.

We extend a heartfelt thank you to our donor, Bruce Buchanan '73, for his support in elevating the Visiting Artist Series in honor of his Great Aunt, Janet Flanner. His gift will expand the reach of the series to include performance artists, actors, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, playwrights, poets, art & film critics and other creative minds engaged in the intersection of arts and culture.