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Since the opening
of the Belk Visual Arts Center in 1993 the art department, in conjunction
with The
Friends of the Arts at Davidson College,has sponsored the annual
Guest Lecture Series in Art History. Noted art historians and critics
come to campus to deliver a public lecture and present a seminar
for art majors. Visiting lecturers have included the following:
DENNIS ADRIAN
In January 1998 Chicago art critic Dennis Adrian was invited to
campus to speak on "Roger Brown and His Time" in conjunction
with an exhibition in the William H. Van Every Gallery titled "Roger
Brown and Friends." Mr. Adrian authored the text of the accompanying
catalog and critiqued the work of studio art majors.
ALBERT BOIME
Albert Boime—professor
of art history at UCLA, prolific writer and lecturer, recipient
of many prestigious fellowships, and champion of the marginalized—
visited Davidson in the fall of 1994. His public lecture, "Eugene
Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People: Single Parent or
Revolutionary Whore?" and seminar for art majors, "Van
Gogh's Starry Night" as well as a public lecture at
the Mint Museum in Charlotte on "The Art of Exclusion: Representing
Blacks in the Nineteenth Century," provided ample evidence
of his varied art historical interests.
SARAH BURNS
Noted American art historian and Ruth N. Halls Professor Sarah Burns
from Indiana University presented "Being Big: Winslow Homer
and the American Business Spirit" in the fall of 1996. She
followed the lecture the next day with a seminar entitled "The
Price of Beauty: Art, Commerce, and the Late 19th-Century American
Studio Interior."
ARTHUR DANTO
Famed philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto spoke on "The
Sistine Ceiling: Restoration and Meaning" at the winter 1999
Reynolds Lecture. He also led a seminar around the question "Can
the eye be legitimately regarded as historical?" and provided
individual critiques to studio art majors.
CAROL DUNCAN
As a leading voice of the early feminist movement and of the social-political
approach to art history and criticism, Carol Duncan was welcomed
to Davidson in the winter of 1994. She teaches art history at Ramapo
College of New Jersey and has authored The Pursuit of Pleasure
and The Aesthetics of Power. While on campus Professor Duncan
delivered "Public Spaces, Private Interests: The Shaping of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art," and conducted a seminar for
majors on the museum world's reaction to her article entitled "The
MoMA's Hot Mamas."
ALBERT ELSEN
Renowned Stanford University art historian Albert Elsen was the
inaugural lecturer for the series in November of 1993. Recognized
as one of the world's foremost authorities on Rodin, Professor Elsen
lectured on "Auguste Rodin's The Burghers of Calais"
and spoke with art majors in a hands-on seminar around Jean d'Aire,
the sculpture that provides the focal point in the atrium of the
new Belk Visual Arts Center.
LISA HOWORTH
Lisa Howorth, who authored Yellow Dogs, Hushpuppies,
and Bluetick Hounds: The Official Encyclopedia of Southern
Culture Quiz Book and taught at The Center for the Study of
the American South at the University of Mississippi, visited in
March of 2000. Her seminar and lecture, "Southern Art and Southern
Religion," centered on self-taught artists such as Bill Traylor.
JOHN DIXON HUNT
Not only students and faculty, but regional garden enthusiasts as
well, welcomed John Dixon Hunt, chair of the Department of Landscape
Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania
and founding editor of Studies in the History of Gardens and
Designed Landscapes, to campus in November 1999. Professor Hunt's
topic, "Garden in the City of Venice, Epitome of State and
Site," drew from his recent book Greater Perfections: The
Practice of Garden Theory and his work on the restoration of
the Palazzo Patarol gardens in Venice.
NINA ATHANASSAGLOU
KALLMYER
University of Delaware's Nina Athanassaglou Kallmyer gave the spring
1998 lecture entitled "In the Year 1832: Art and Ideology in
the Time of Cholera," an examination of Eugene Delacroix's
portrait of Paganini, who was suffering from the disease. In her
seminar with the majors she addressed the issue of style and expression
in the work of that artist.
JOSEPH KOERNER
Revealing his family's experience in pre-war Vienna, Joseph Koerner
demonstrated in "The Family Portrait" that art history
and one's personal history can be intertwined. In his seminar Professor
Koerner, who was teaching at Harvard in the fall of 1995, shared
his thoughts on creativity and the subject of his latest book, Caspar
David Friedrich.
MICHAEL LESLIE
Continuing with his scholarly interest in gardens, Professor Larry
Ligo in January 2001 invited Michael Leslie, Dean of British Studies
at Oxford and a Rhodes University faculty member, to speak on "Landscape
and Liberty: English Verdure, English Culture 1600-1800." This
was preceded by a seminar discussion with art majors of Joseph Addison's
Pleasures of the Imagination and associated texts.
NEIL LEVINE
Harvard University's Gleason Professor of History of Art and Architecture
and noted Frank Lloyd Wright scholar Neil Levine presented the spring
1997 lecture, "The Significance and Legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright's
Architecture." Davidson's Phi Beta Kappa chapter helped sponsor
this lecture in connection with an exhibition of works by Pedro
Guerrero, personal photographer of the famous architect for 20 years.
ESTILL CURTIS
PENNINGTON
Estill Curtis "Buck" Pennington shared his special, often-humorous
insights into Southern culture in February 1995. The Curator of
Southern Painting at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia
presented the lecture "Forsaking All Others: The Unfortunate
Marriage of Elvis Presley and Mrs. Jefferson Davis," followed
by a seminar on "Learning by Looking: Southern Painting in
its Cultural Context."
FRANÇOIS
POUILLON
François Pouillon, Director of Studies at Paris's School
for Advanced Study in Social Sciences and a visiting fellow at Princeton
University, visited campus in March of 1998. Sponsored jointly by
the Public Lectures Committee, Dean Rusk Center, and the History
and Art departments, Professor Pouillon spoke on "Nineteenth-Century
Orientalist Painting."
RICHARD POWELL
April 2000 brought Richard Powell, Duke University's John Spenser
Bassett Professor of Art History, to campus for a lecture, "What
Becomes a Legend Most?: Reflections on Romare Bearden." A noted
author and art historian, Professor Powell was the guest of honor
at a reception by the Black Student Coalition and led a seminar
for art majors on "Modern African-American Artists."
IVAN A.
SCHULMAN
In March 2006
Professor Emeritus of Spanish American and Comparative Literature at
the University of Illinois and research professor at Florida
International University, visited Davidson. Professor Schulman
is a noted scholar of the work of writer and revolutionary, José
Marti. His evening lecture was entitled "Orientalisms:
Art and Literature." The following day he conducted a seminar
for art students entitled "From Painting to Poetry" using Gerome's
painting, "Pollice Verso" to show how it became a poem in Marti's
"Versos libres."
ARLETTE SÉRULLAZ
Curator of the Department of Graphic Arts at the Louvre and Director
of the Delacroix Museum in Paris, Arlette Sérullaz marked
the 200th anniversary of the famous artist's birth with "The
Image of Eugène Delacroix in 1998, the Bicentennial Year"
in the fall of 1998. At the invitation of Professor Shaw Smith,
whose scholarship centers on Delacroix, she continued this theme
the following day in her seminar for art majors on "Eugene
Delacroix: The Repercussions of the Bicentennial Year."
RICHARD SHIFF
Richard Shiff, Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University
of Texas at Austin, presented "Matisse and the Wheelwright"
in November of 2000. The following day he met with art majors to
discuss his recent writing on contemporary artist Chuck Close.
LEO STEINBERG
World-renowned art historian and critic Leo Steinberg spent several
days on campus in January 1995. He conducted seminars and informal
talks on "Why I Am Unfit to Speak about Contemporary Art",
"Picasso's Self-Portrait, 1907 (Prague)", and "The
Nature of the Spectator's Participation in a Work of Art,"
and then delivered the annual Reynolds Lecture, "The Outrageous
Secrets of Michelangelo's Famous Pietà."
KRISTINE STILES
In November 1997 Kristine Stiles of Duke University explored the
impact of the powerful images called to mind by words such as "mushroom-shaped
cloud", "Three Mile Island", "radioactive half-life",
and "Chernobyl" in her lecture "Remembering Invisibility:
Documentary Photography in the Nuclear Age." The next day art
majors continued the discussion in a seminar on how photographers
who specialize in the subjects of the nuclear age construct that
history.
PAUL TUCKER
Spring 1994 brought Paul Tucker, professor of art history at the
University of Massachusetts at Boston, to Davidson. Professor Tucker
writes and lectures extensively on Impressionism and shared his
expertise in a public lecture, "Claude Monet's Paintings of
the Gare St. Lazare and Issues of Modernity in Impressionism."
The following day he met with art majors to lead a seminar on Monet
and Impressionism.
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