David Bjelajac gives a talk called, "Thomas Cole, Freemasonry and the American Hercules." Thomas Cole became a Freemason in Zanesville, Ohio, during the summer of 1822. Cole's paintings were first publicized in New York newspapers by William Dunlap, a brother Mason, and Cole’s paintings captured the patronage of the Empire State’s Masonic elite. David Bjelajac, Professor of Art and Human Sciences at George Washington University, reinterprets Cole’s The Titan’s Goblet (1833), which honored New York Governor De Witt Clinton, Erie Canal builder, art academician and leading Freemason. This small, enigmatic painting draws upon Masonic ritual and Herculean myth and looks forward to Cole’s famed Course of Empire and Voyage of Life series.