Lecture & Panel Discussion: Marie Louise Brent & les gueules cassées with Sarah Lucas

French-American sculptor Marie Louise Brent served with the American Fund for French Wounded in Lorraine, volunteered with the Studio for Portrait Masks (Anna Coleman Ladd’s special project that outfitted wounded French and American World War I soldiers with facial prosthetics), and was awarded a French medal of honor.

Join us for complimentary café and croissants in our cozy Brown Médiathèque and hear from Brent’s great-grandniece, Sarah Lucas, about this Midwest-born artist who helped countless gueules cassées—“broken mugs,” victims of machine-gunfire, bombs, and grenade explosions—transition back into society.

After her lecture, Sarah will be joined by Jim Fairhall, Professor of Modern Literature & Environmental Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, and geneologist Elizabeth Miller for a discussion of this extraordinary figure.

Doors at 3:00 p.m. for complimentary refreshments. Program at 3:30 p.m. Please enter via 810 N Dearborn St.

Please contact us at [email protected] with any dietary restrictions or accessibilty requests.

About the Speaker

Sarah Lucas

Sarah Lucas is the Special Projects Director at the Alive Inside Foundation as well as the proud owner of Celebrating Stories, Ltd. Her organization is dedicated to helping (primarily seniors) tell their most sacred stories to celebrate their lives and share with loved ones. She also teaches workshops at libraries that demonstrate new and deeper ways to help interview our family members. Sarah is delighted to help bring attention to her relative Marie Louise Brent’s story.

Sarah comes from a theater, visual arts, and humanities background and has used these tools in creating curriculum for seniors with and without dementia. She is a certified Storyteller and End-of-Life Doula (NEDA approved).

In her spare time, she cooks at a homeless shelter for women in Chicago and takes each day as an opportunity to learn, connect with others, and exercise creativity.

About the Panelists

Jim Fairhall

Jim Fairhall teaches modern literature and environmental studies at DePaul University in Chicago. His publications include award-winning works of scholarship, fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry.

When he was a teenager, Marie Louise Depréaux (née Brent), his grandaunt Ashée, visited his family in England. Shortly after, he stayed with her where she worked at the Fondation Thiers, an institute for postgraduate study, in Paris. That building (1890) is now the St. James Hotel in the 16th arrondissement. As Jim noted when he stayed there, it retains most of the architectural features of the Fondation (which has since moved elsewhere in Paris).

Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Miller is a retired accounting professional who is a fiercely determined and talented genealogist spanning 30 years. 

She has been an advisor to authors of historical books written on her family’s ancestry as well as other genealogical websites and historical societies across the country. She is currently writing a book on Marie Louise Brent. 

She graduated with a political science degree from Washington University. She lives in St. Louis with her husband. Elizabeth is delighted to share her knowledge on how far you can take a genealogical study.

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