Art History

Thursday, February 16 at 4:30
and
Friday, February 17 at 2:00.
Curatorial Conversations in the Art Museum
Focus & John A. and Helen P. Becker Galleries, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Join the student-curators of Insight Out: Exploring Gifts from Private Collectors for a conversation about how they created the exhibition that opened last Friday night. Find out more about what goes on behind the scenes in the Art Museum and the objects in the show. Conversations will be held in the Museum on Thursday, February 16 at 4:30 and Friday, February 17 at 2:00.
Everyone is welcome.
Please come and bring your questions.

Jan 24, 2012 - Apr 15, 2012
Insight Out: Exploring Gifts of Art from Private Collectors
Focus & John A. and Helen P. Becker Galleries, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

This exhibition celebrates the contributions of private art collectors to Bowdoin since the bequest of James Bowdoin III in 1811. Their many gifts – a few of which have been selected - extend the legacy of James Bowdoin III, expand visual and cultural horizons, and enrich the liberal arts curriculum. Artists featured include James McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, Henri Matisse, and Käthe Kollwitz. The show is curated by students in Art History 261: Private Treasures; Public Gifts.

Friday, February 10, 2012
American Artists as Collectors and Tastemakers: Objects, History, and the Imagined Self
Isabel L. Taube, Instructor, School of Visual Arts
Visiting Faculty, Rutgers University

Isabel Taube teaches art history at the school of Visual Arts, New York. After graduating from Bowdoin in 1992 she served as the Museum of Art's first Mellon Curatorial Intern. Using William Merritt Chase and Walter Gay as examples, she discusses the role of the artist as self-promoter, tastemaker, and interior designer during a period when art and decorative objects too on deep personal significance.
Main Lounge, Moulton Union

7:00 PM Free and open to the public

Sponsored by the Department of Art History and the Student Museum & Art Club (SMAC)

Thursday, February 9, 2012
"Horace Walpole, Strawberry Hill, and the Queerness of Gothic"
Matthew Reeve (Associate Professor of Art History and Queen's National Scholar, Queen's University, Canada)
7 PM, Beam Classroom

Scholars have long recognized that the Gothic Revival of the nineteenth century synthesized politics, religion and architecture into a cohesive argument about the supremacy of the medieval past over a debased modern present. It has not been satisfactorily understood that in doing so, the movement profoundly reshaped, obfuscated or erased eighteenth-century modes of viewing and describing the Gothic, in which the style was used as a vehicle for discussions of human alterity. This paper considers one moment in this early history of the Gothic: the building of Horace Walpole's “villa” or castle at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham (London) from 1747. Beginning with the observation that the revival of the Gothic in the early eighteenth century paralleled the codifications of a new sexuality now known as "homosexuality", this paper explores interrelationships between sexuality, taste and the Gothic at Strawberry Hill.

Friday, September 9, 2011, 4:30 p.m., Kresge Auditorium:
“‘I come here to rest and to paint a little’: Edward Hopper in Maine”
Carol Troyen, Curator Emerita of American Paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Thursday, September 22, 2011, 4:30 p.m., Kresge Auditorium:
Curator's Lecture in conjunction with the exhibition Along the Yangzi River: Regional Culture of the Bronze Age from Hunan
Jay Xu, Director, Museum of Asian Art, San Francisco
Following the talk, guests are invited to the Museum to attend the fall open house and celebration of the opening of Along the Yangzi River: Regional Culture of the Bronze Age from Hunan

Willow Chang (Director, China Institute Gallery, NYC), organizer of Along the Yangzi River, speaks at the Museum Open House celebrating the exhibition's opening.

Friday, September 23, 2011, 4:30 p.m., Kresge Auditorium:
Lecture in conjunction with Edward Hopper’s Maine
Alexander Nemerov, Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art, Yale University

Thursday, October 13, 2011, at 4:30 p.m., Kresge Auditorium:
"From Center to Periphery: Regional Culture and Identity in the Ritual Arts of Hunan Province"
Stephen J. Goldberg, Associate Professor of Art History, Hamilton College
Respondent: Ankeney Weitz, Associate Professor of Art and East Asian Studies, Colby College

Saturday, October 15, 2011, 4:00 p.m., Kresge Auditorium:
“Edward Hopper in Maine: A Biographer's View"
Gail Levin, Distinguished Professor of Art History at Baruch College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York, Following the talk, guests are invited to the Museum for a reception and guided tours of Edward Hopper’s Maine.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011, at 7:30 PM, Beam Classroom:
"Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer's Civil War"
Peter Wood, Professor Emeritus of History, Duke University

Thursday, December 1, 2011, at 4:30 p.m., Kresge Auditorium:
"Passion for the Past: The Significance of Archaeology in China Today"
Magnus Fiskesjö, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University
Respondent: James Higginbotham, Associate Curator for the Ancient Collection and Associate Professor of Classics, Bowdoin College.