Vanderbilt University History of Art Blog

Lisa Swart to Deliver Archaeology Lecture on March 20

Lisa Swart, lecturer at Vanderbilt Divinity School and president of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt, will deliver the Archaeological Institute of America lecture at 7:00 pm on Thursday, March 20, at the Nashville Parthenon. Her lecture is entitled “Crafting for Eternity: Early Third Intermediate Period Workshops in Thebes, Egypt.”

The early Third Intermediate Period in Thebes is considered to be “the apogee of pictorial expression of religious thought within the priesthood of Amun,” said Swart, an Egyptologist specializing in the Egyptian religion, the Third Intermediate Period, Egyptian art and iconography, and funerary customs. “The abundance of private coffins, funerary papyri, and accompanying objects from this period attest to a significant community of artists working near the Theban necropolis. Due to the absence of archaeological remains, texts, and monuments describing the occupation of artists, very little is known regarding the activities of artists during this period. Consequently we are in the dark concerning the existence of craft production centers in Thebes and their organizational structure at this time.”

The coffins, papyri, and other funerary objects offer crucial textual and artistic evidence for the existence of several distinct “workshops” operating in Thebes. Swart’s talk will examine the work of these artists, identifying the “hands” of individual artists and the workshops to which they belonged.

Free and open to the public, Swart’s lecture is sponsored by the Nashville Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the Nashville Parthenon, and Vanderbilt’s Department of Classical Studies and Department of History of Art. Those who plan to attend the lecture are encouraged to call the Nashville Parthenon at 615.862.8431 to reserve a seat.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 18, 2014 in HART, Lectures, VRC

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Halle O’Neal Featured in Fireside Chat Series on March 13

Halle O’Neal, Mellon Assistant Professor of History of Art, will give a talk as part of Vanderbilt’s Fireside Chat series on Thursday, March 13, at 7 p.m. in McTyeire Hall. Her presentation is entitled The Universe in a Fingernail? Connecting Pop Culture with Buddhist Relics.

“You might be surprised to find out that the principles underlying Buddhist relics and reliquaries and issues of commemoration that seem so distant from us are in fact ubiquitous in our contemporary society,” said O’Neal. “Come discover unexpected connections to medieval pilgrims, seventeenth-century Japanese nuns, and mummies.”

O’Neal specializes in premodern Japanese Buddhist art, in particular the intersections of body, relics, and text in visual culture. She teaches classes on Japanese painting and sculpture, East Asian art and architecture, and Buddhist relics and reliquaries.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 11, 2014 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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Fine Arts Gallery Exhibit of German Art Opens March 13

The Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery celebrates the opening of History’s Shadow: German Art and the Formulation of National Identity with a reception on Thursday, March 13, from 5 to 7 pm in Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody campus. The exhibit, curated by Joseph S. Mella, gallery director, will remain on view through June 5.

Presented as the first survey of German art from the Fine Arts Gallery’s collections, History’s Shadow: German Art and the Formulation of National Identity addresses the role of history in shaping German art and how that history has influenced the formulation of German identity. This exhibition also will address how we, in turn, view German art through a lens ground in our complex relationship with the German past, with World War II still coloring how many Americans and Germans alike view Germany, its culture, and its art.

While not a comprehensive survey of German art, History’s Shadow spans 500 years, with particular attention given to political and cultural events and the way these events “cast a shadow” on both the artists and the art created by them. The earliest German work in the Fine Arts Gallery’s collection is the melancholic Rhenish Pietà, a late medieval work (ca. 1450-1460). Old Master prints are well represented, beginning in the fifteenth century with works by such artists as Albrecht Dürer and his teacher, Michael Wolgemut.

Also featured are several works by artists called the kleine Meister, or “Little Masters,” a group of German artists active in the first half of the sixteenth century who produced a wide range of small-scale, intricately worked prints, nearly all of which were engravings. Artists from the period leading up to and immediately following World War I, such as Erich Heckel, Max Klinger, Conrad Felixmüller, and Kathë Kollwitz, are included, reflecting the impact of the war on Germany and its artists. Art from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is represented by Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, the conceptualist Thomas Locher, and an excerpt from Christiane Baumgartner’s 1 Sekunde, a meditation on time and contemporaneity.

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11 am to 4 pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 1-5 pm from March 13-April 30; and Tuesday through Friday, noon to 4 pm, and Saturday, 1-5 pm from May 1-June 5. Free and open to the public, the Fine Arts Gallery is housed in Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South, on the western edge of the Peabody College campus. Parking is available in Lot 95 outside Cohen Hall, off 21st Avenue South on the Peabody campus and across from Medical Center East.

History’s Shadow: German Art and the Formulation of National Identity is made possible by a generous gift from Leslie Cecil and Creighton Michael, MA’76.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 10, 2014 in Fine Arts Gallery, HART, VRC

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Hollis Clayson to Present Goldberg Lecture on March 27

S. Hollis Clayson, 2013-2014 Samuel H. Kress Professor, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities, Northwestern University, will present the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture in Art History on Thursday, March 27, at 4:10 p.m. in 203 Cohen Hall. Her lecture is entitled “Confinement and Absorption: Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s and Edvard Munch’s Paris Threshold Pictures,” with a reception to follow in the atrium.

At Northwestern she is also a professor of art history and holds a joint appointment in the department of history. She is the founding director of the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.

A historian of modern art who specializes in 19th-century Europe, especially France, and transatlantic exchanges between France and the United States, Clayson is author of Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era and Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (1870-71).

She is co-editor of Understanding Paintings: Themes in Art Explored and Explained, a thematic study of painting in the Western tradition, which has been translated into six languages. Her current research focuses upon U.S. artists in Paris (1870-1914) and their preoccupation with night in the City of Light. In 2013 Clayson curated the exhibition Electric Paris at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, the first to explore the ways in which artists depicted older oil and gas lamps and the newer electric lighting that emerged around the turn of the twentieth century. Her related book examines the visual cultures of the City of Light in the era of Thomas Edison and will be published by the University of Chicago Press.

Sponsored by the Department of History of Art, the Goldberg Lecture is free and open to the public. Limited parking is available in Lot 95 outside Cohen Hall, off 21st Avenue South on the Peabody campus and across from Medical Center East.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 6, 2014 in HART, Lectures, VRC

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HART Students Study Aaron Douglas Murals at Fisk University

Standing beneath one of Aaron Douglas’s murals in the card catalogue room of the former Cravath Memorial Library (now Cravath Hall, the main administrative building) at Fisk University in Nashville are (left to right) Demi Landstadt, Khalila Blake, and Sujin Shin, students in Rebecca VanDiver’s African American Art class. VanDiver, senior lecturer in the department of history of art, led this field trip to enhance their study of Douglas and the Harlem Renaissance and the unique elements of an African American visual aesthetic.

In 1930 Douglas, the foremost visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance and an accomplished muralist, painted murals for Fisk, a small, historically black institution, that narrated a history of African American life. Douglas produced powerful artistic forms that incorporate music, dance, literature, and politics and had a lasting impact on American art history and the nation’s cultural heritage. In the late 1930s Douglas joined the Fisk faculty, and later he founded and chaired the university’s art department, a position he held until his retirement in 1966. The Fisk murals were restored in 2003.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 6, 2014 in HART, HART in Nashville, VRC

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DIMLI Takes the Stage at VRA Conference March 12-15

Chris Strasbaugh, director of the Visual Resources Center in Vanderbilt’s History of Art department, will talk about DIMLI (Digital Image Management Library) in several sessions planned for VRA 32, A Visual Approach, the 2014 Visual Resources Association’s annual conference held March 12-15 in Milwaukee. Strasbaugh and his colleagues have developed the open source DIMLI, a web-based application written from the ground up using PHP and MySQL to interact with visual resources relational databases.

Strasbaugh will present DIMLI as a case study and how collaborations are being built across the university in a session entitled “The Teaching Turn: From Static Collections to Dynamic Learning Centers.” Strasbaugh has transformed the department’s Visual Resources Center into a collaborative learning space where faculty and students alike can come to work on projects and refine imaging skills.

A participant in the poster presentation event, Strasbaugh will present “Fork Ahead: Road Map of the Migration Adventure at Vanderbilt University” in an attempt to stimulate dialogue with other visual resources colleagues. At the annual VRA Camp, a forum for launching innovative ideas and sowing of seeds for future collaboration, he will be available to highlight the progress of DIMLI since last year’s conference when it was initially introduced to the VRA.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 6, 2014 in HART, VRC

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Warren Center Announces New Seminar on Material Culture

Mireille Lee, assistant professor of history of art, and Beth Conklin, associate professor of anthropology, are coordinating a new seminar at the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities entitled “Material Culture in Context.”

This seminar explores objects and materiality from multiple perspectives. It will examine the meaning attached to objects by the people who made and used them, partially through looking at the contexts (cultural, social, historical, spatial) in which objects appear. Participants will also explore how objects are transferred through space and time. This seminar should be of special interest to specialists in archaeology, anthropology, sociology, history, and history of art, as well as cultural and media studies, and philosophy.

The seminar will meet on Tuesday, February 25, at noon at the Warren Center. Interested participants can email allison.thompson@vanderbilt.edu to be added to the seminar mailing list.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on February 24, 2014 in Events, HART, VRC

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Seeing Red: The Passion, Madness and Desperation of Rothko

Tennessee Repertory Theatre is joining with Vanderbilt’s Master of Liberal Arts and Science Program and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts for a special event focused on the Tony Award-winning play Red by John Logan. The program will be held on Monday, February 17, at 6:30 pm in the Wilson Hall auditorium.

The event will feature scenes from Tennessee Rep’s production of Red followed by a panel discussion featuring Leah Lowe, associate professor and chair of Vanderbilt’s department of theatre, Mel Ziegler, professor and chair of Vanderbilt’s department of art, and Susan H. Edwards, executive director of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

Reservations are suggested as seating is limited. Visit this link to RSVP.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on February 10, 2014 in Events, VRC

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Amanda Wunder to Lecture on the Spanish Farthingale

Amanda Wunder, assistant professor of history at Lehman College (CUNY) and of art history at the CUNY Graduate Center, will present a lecture entitled “The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Farthingale: Women’s Fashions and Politics in Seventeenth-Century Spain” on Thursday, February 27, at 4:10 pm in 203 Cohen Hall on the Peabody campus. The lecture is cosponsored by the Departments of History of Art, History, and Spanish and Portuguese.

Wunder’s research focuses on the art and culture of early modern Spain. Her completed book manuscript, Worldly Glory: Artists, Aristocrats, and the Creation of Golden-Age Seville, explores artistic and social transformations in Spain’s Atlantic port city from 1503 to 1717. Her current book project, The Spanish Style: The Politics of Extreme Fashion in an Age of Empire, 1492-1700, focuses on textiles, tailoring, and the meaning of clothes in Imperial Spain.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on February 7, 2014 in HART, Lectures, VRC

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Robert Ousterhout to Deliver Goldberg Lecture on February 20

Robert Ousterhout, professor of the history of art, University of Pennsylvania, will present the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture in Art History on Thursday, February 20, at 4:10 p.m. in 203 Cohen Hall. His lecture is entitled “The Life and Afterlife of Constantine’s Column,” with a reception to follow in the atrium.

A renowned scholar of Byzantine architecture, Ousterhout was among those who inspected the summit of Constantine’s column during the recent renovation (2003-2009). His lecture will examine the oldest and most enigmatic monument of Byzantine Constantinople.

Ousterhout teaches courses in Byzantine art and architectural history and serves as the director of the Center for Ancient Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the documentation, interpretation, and restoration of the vanishing architectural heritage of the eastern Mediterranean. His current fieldwork concentrates on Byzantine architecture, monumental art, and urbanism in Constantinople and Cappadocia ranging from such projects as restoring ancient churches in Istanbul to documentation and analysis of settlements in Cappadocia.

He has surveyed and excavated sites in Greece, Turkey, and Israel, but the allure of Istanbul continues to draw him back. In an interview with Emily Wilson, University of Oregon, he said: “The history, the city surrounded by water, the food and big city hustle and bustle all appealed to me. I knew I couldn’t just work in a library. I needed field work, and I began working directly with the documentation of monuments. I’ve since also discovered the wonders of working in rural Cappadocia.”

His abiding interest in Byzantine archaeology, art, and architecture has resulted in major publications and exhibitions, including Master Builders of Byzantium (Princeton University Press, 1999; 2nd ed., University of Pennsylvania Museum Publications, 2008), John Henry Haynes: A Photographer and Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire 1881-1900 (Istanbul, 2011), A Byzantine Settlement in Cappadocia (Dumbarton Oaks Studies 42, Washington, DC, 2011), Kariye Camii, Yeniden/The Kariye Camii Reconsidered, edited with Holger A. Klein and Brigitte Pitarakis (Istanbul Research Institute, 2011), and Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans: Archaeology, Diplomacy, Art, exhibition catalogue (Pera Museum, Istanbul, 2011), edited with Renata Holod.

Sponsored by the Department of History of Art and the Nashville Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the Goldberg Lecture is free and open to the public. Limited parking is available in Lot 95 outside Cohen Hall, off 21st Avenue South on the Peabody campus and across from Medical Center East.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on January 31, 2014 in HART, Lectures, VRC

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