National and international scholars, artists, historians, and critics share their expertise and insights.

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Friends Lecture: "From Inside the Wyeth Family: Revered American Artists"

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Victoria Wyeth

The Mary and Mark Fiterman Lecture

Victoria Wyeth (granddaughter of Andrew Wyeth) will relate often surprising anecdotes about her family of artists as she discusses their works and the contexts in which they were created.

Wyeth attended Harvard University as a visiting graduate student and earned an M.A. in psychology from Wesleyan University. She guides public tours of works by N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

Free.

Gods and Rulers in the Ancient Americas

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: William Barnes

This lecture looks at how the various cultures of ancient Mesoamerica (an area that includes parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador), Central America, and Andean South America depicted their rulers and their gods, and how they illustrated the crucial activities performed by these figures.

William L. Barnes is an assistant professor of art history at University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul.

$15, $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Masters of American Watercolor: Winslow Homer and John Marin

Pillsbury Auditorium

Martha Tedeschi, president of the Print Council of America and curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, will speak at the inaugural meeting of the new Prints and Drawings Affinity Group. Tedeschi organized a sucessful exhibition on Winslow Homer's watercolors and is now completing the catalogue for one on Marin's. An authority on the subject, Tedeschi will show images, including details that will give people the sensation of looking closely at the works.

Tedeschi received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and is author of publications on the prints, drawings, and watercolors of Winslow Homer, John Marin, James McNeill Whistler, and others.

Admission: $15; $10 for MIA members; free for Print & Drawing Affinity Group members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Building Trajan's Column

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Lynne Lancaster

Trajan's Column is best known for its sculpted spiral frieze depicting Trajan's victories in the Dacian Wars (A.D. 101-106), but it was also a great technological achievement requiring careful site organization. The blocks that compose Trajan's Column are among the heaviest to have been lifted during the Roman Imperial period.

Lancaster examines the evidence for how the blocks were quarried, transported to the site, and then lifted into place, and proposes a hypothetical reconstruction of the lifting tower used to raise the blocks.

Lancaster is an associate professor in the Department of Classics and World Religions at Ohio University, Athens. She received her Ph.D. in classical archaeology from Oxford University and has written widely on construction materials and techniques in the Roman Imperial Period, including Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial Rome: Innovation in Context (2005).

This free lecture is co-presented with the Archaeological Institute of America and its local chapter.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Mermaids, Shape Shifters, and Chimeras: The Eyes as Mirror

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Shelly Nordtorp-Madson

During the Middle Ages it was thought that one could tell the difference between an animal and a human in animal form (a so-called shape-shifter) by looking into its eyes: in contrast to outward appearance, the eyes remained human. People have believed in the existence of shape-shifters of all kinds from prehistoric times to the present, as evidenced in the Harry Potter and Twilight books.

In this illustrated lecture, you will examine how shape-shifters have been expressed in the visual arts.

Nordtorp-Madson holds an M.A. in art history and a Ph.D. in the history of design, both from the University of Minnesota. She also earned a diploma in dress design and draping at the Bloch Tilskaer Institut in Denmark. She is chief curator and clinical faculty at the University of St. Thomas, where she administers the exhibition and collections programs and teaches medieval art and apparel history.

$15; $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Friends Lecture:

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Jennifer Montagu

Free

Newman Lecture on Contemporary Photography by James Welling

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: James Welling

Focusing on twenty-five photographs from 1970 to 2010, James Welling will chart his transition as an artist from video, sculpture, dance and painting to photography.

Welling received his M.F.A. and B.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts and is professor of photography in the Department of Art at UCLA. His work has appeared in more than sixty solo and group exhibitions.

The Arnold Newman Lecture Series is made possible thanks to a generous gift from the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation.

$15; $10 for MIA members; free for Contemporary and Photography and New Media Affinity Group members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

The Power of Women in Renaissance Art

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Michael Gaudio

The subject of the "Power of Women" appears throughout Renaissance art, and is reflected in the exhibition "Beware Her Wiles: Woman as Temptress in the Renaissance Tradition," on view in Gallery 344. This lecture explores a variety of expressions of this popular theme.

Gaudio received his Ph.D. in art history from Stanford University and is associate professor of art history at the University of Minnesota, where he specializes in early modern Europe and the Atlantic world. He is the author of Engraving the Savage: The New World and Techniques of Civilization (Minneapolis: 2008).

$15, $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Regis Masters Reunion

Pillsbury Auditorium

The Northern Clay Center and the MIA have invited all the Regis Masters ceramic artists to return to NCC for its 20th anniversary Saturday, October 16, from 7 to 11 p.m.; and two reunion roundtable discussions at the MIA, listed here. So far, the Masters who are planning to attend are: Nino Caruso (2004), William Daley (1998), Warren MacKenzie (1997), Janet Mansfield (2002), John Mason (2005), James Melchert (1998), Ron Meyers (2008), Don Reitz (2007), and Patti Warashina (2009).

As with the first roundtable discussions, these informal conversations among the participants and the audience will address questions and issues about the medium, long lives and creative work, and the need to keep creating.

Co-presented with Northern Clay Center; free for MIA members; free, no reservations required.

Masterworks in Native American Art

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Eva Fognell

On the opening day of "Art of the Native Americans: The Thaw Collection," Fognell will give an overview of the exhibition, drawing upon works from the Arctic, Northwest Coast, California, Plains, Southwest and Woodlands regions. While the works of art are enormously diverse in type, style, and use of materials, they demonstrate a consistent appreciation of the power of the natural world in human affairs and the universal appeal of beautifully realized works of art.

Fognell is curator of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art at Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and is a member of the Otsego Institute.

$15, $10 for MIA members; free for Native American Affinity Group members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Garment as Metaphor: The Paper Works of Erica Spitzer Rasmussen

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Erica Spitzer Rasmussen

The MIA's Decorative Arts, Textile, and Sculpture Affinity Group presents a talk by Minnesota artist Erica Spitzer Rasmussen about her work. Through slides and stories, Spitzer Rasmussen will discuss the development of her sculptural and wearable works of art. In addition to addressing the conceptual aspects of her work, Spitzer Rasmussen also will talk about her embellishing techniques with non-archival media.

Spitzer Rasmussen earned an M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota and is an associate professor at Metropolitan State University. Her work takes the form of garments created from hand-made paper and other materials.

Admission: $15; $10 for MIA members; free for members of the Decorative Arts Affinity Group.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Library Affinity Group: The Making of a Catalogue Raisonné

Friends Community Room

Patrick Noon, the MIA's Patrick and Aimee Butler Chair of Paintings, published a catalogue raisonné, or scientific compilation, of the work of the celebrated British Romantic artist Richard Parkes Bonington, 1802-28 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). It includes four hundred oil and watercolor paintings known to exist.

In this lecture, Noon will discuss how his research and publication evolved over two decades, and explain the various types and raisons d'etre of catalogues raisonnes.

Free to members of the Library Affinity Group. To reserve, please call (612) 870-3117

Friends Lecture: Black Hawk, Maria Martinez and Elizabeth Hickox: Individual Artistry in Historical Native American Art

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Janet Catherine Berlo

This lecture examines works in the Thaw Collection by three important Native American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Looking at works by artists whose lives we know something about can help shed light on the many Native works whose makers were not recorded.

Berlo holds a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University and is a professor of art history and visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester in New York. She has published widely on the subject of Native American art.

Free.

Max Beckmann: The Accidental Expressionist

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Amy Hamlin

The modern German painter Max Beckmann has long been associated with the Expressionists of early twentieth-century Munich, Dresden, and Berlin. And while Beckmann's mature style of painting closely resembles the gestural brushstrokes and saturated palette of his German Expressionist contemporaries, his subject matter, politics, and lifestyle were of a different order.

This lecture will situate Beckmann's work within the complex history of Expressionism through a close analysis of several works from the MIA's collection, including Beckmann's Blindman's Buff and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Seated Girl.

Hamlin is an assistant professor of art history at St. Catherine University. She earned her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Growing up in St. Paul, she spent much time in the MIA's Expressionist galleries as a student volunteer.

$15; $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Animals and Alter Egos in Pre-Columbian Art: From Mexico to the Andes

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: William Barnes

Artists in ancient Mesoamerica, Central America, and Andean South America produced myriad works of art that depict animals and the animal alter egos of rulers, priests, and shamans. In fact, most animal imagery in the art of these cultures relates in some way to the supernatural and, quite often, to human transformation. This lecture investigates the range of creatures that inhabit the MIA's ancient Americas gallery, and encourages greater understanding of the dynamic spiritual world involving these diverse peoples.

Barnes earned a Ph.D. at Tulane University and is an assistant professor of art history at University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, where he specializes in Central Mexican sculpture and Mesoamerican manuscript painting.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online ».

Diplomacy, Curiosity, and Early Native American Art from the Great Lakes: Two Soldier-Collectors c. 1800

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Ruth B. Phillips

Discover the earliest collectors of Great Lakes Native American art, including British and American military officers during the late 18th and early 19th century. While some of these men and their wives shared the period passion for collecting exotic curiosities, others were involved in intense diplomatic negotiations with prospective indigenous allies. Phillips explores their collections and the interactions they had with Anishinaabe (Ojibwa or Ottawa) and Hodenosaunee (Iroquois) people.

Phillips is the Canada Research Chair in Modern Culture at Carleton University. She founded the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Culture (GRASAC), an international collaboration of researchers from universities, museums, and indigenous communities. She has authored numerous books and co-authored Native North American Art (1998) with Janet Berlo, who will also lecture at the MIA.

$15; $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online »

Exhibiting African Masks in the 21st-Century Museum

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Ruth B. Phillips

The carved wooden masks visitors typically see in the Africa galleries at art museums are only fragments of much larger wholes that include costumes, music, and choreography. By contrast, natural-history museums often exhibit masks with their social context, but often at the expense of their aesthetic qualities and the individual creativity of the artists who made them.

Focusing on recent museum presentations of African masks, specifically Mende Sande masks from West Africa, this talk will address the challenges of displaying African art and discuss new paths to transcend them.

$15; $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online »

Friends Lecture:

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Michael Conforti

Free

Return from Bohemia: American Scene Painting during the Great Depression

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Jennifer Marshall

During the 1920s and '30s, American painting enjoyed a surprising renaissance. Galleries, collectors, and even the U.S. government rushed to fund American art, especially if it portrayed American life. This period was unique in the nation's artistic history because of an unprecedented rejection of foreign influence. American artists began to turn inward, painting scenes of American landscapes, characters, and ways of life.

Using artworks from the MIA's collection, this lecture will offer an introduction to so-called "American Scene Painting" during the interwar period, and consider why American artists--so long enamored of Paris--left "bohemia" for home.

Marshall received her Ph.D. from UCLA and is an assistant professor of North American art at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her book, Machine Art, 1934: Meaning, Materiality, Modernism (University of Chicago, forthcoming) examines the role of industrial objects in the history of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

$15; $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online »

Picturing Nature: The Art of Early American Natural History

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Michael Gaudio

From John White in the sixteenth century to John James Audubon in the nineteenth, visual artists interpreted the flora and fauna of the New World. This lecture explores the work of several artist/naturalists whose remarkable images helped put American nature into transatlantic circulation.

Gaudio received his Ph.D. in art history from Stanford University and is associate professor of art history at the University of Minnesota, where he specializes in early modern Europe and the Atlantic world. He is the author of Engraving the Savage: The New World and Techniques of Civilization (Minneapolis: 2008).

$15, $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online »

Friends Lecture

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Kinji Akagawa

Free

The New Weston Wing: Transforming Japanese Art at the Art Institute of Chicago

Pillsbury Auditorium

The Roger L. and Pamela Weston Wing of the Chicago Institute of Art opened to the public in September, housing newly renovated and expanded galleries of Japanese art. Highlights include spaces for the art of ancient Japan, tea-related arts, decorative arts and painting from the Edo period (1615-1868) to today. New acquisitions as well as familiar favorites find a home in the dramatic new galleries that feature contemporary Japanese design and architectural elements.

Janice Katz is Roger L. Weston Associate Curator of Japanese Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton and is editor of Beyond Golden Clouds: Japanese Screens from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum (2009).

$15; $10 for MIA members, free for Asian Affinity Group members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online »

Enlivening the Tomb: Sepulcher and Performance in Late-Medieval Burgundy and Beyond

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Johannes Tripps

Normally screened by curtains or inserted in tabernacle-like frames with shutters, medieval tomb sculptures of the dead were visible to the public only a few times a year. But when they were unveiled, these sculptures stood at the center of sumptuous celebrations and rites.

This lecture will provide insight into one of the most fascinating chapters of late medieval history in Europe.

Tripps is professor of the history of the applied arts at the University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg, and was selected as Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation DFG. Later he was appointed conservator and vice-director of the Historisches Museum in Bern in Switzerland. Before he assumed his current position in Leipzig, he was a professor of art history at the Universita degli Studi in Florence.

$15, $10 for MIA members.

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online »

Titian and His Followers: From Sacred to Profane

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Paul Joannides, Ph.D.

Like many great painters, Titian changed his creative approach toward both subject and medium over his lifetime. This lecture will place his poesie (c. 1553-62) paintings within the context of his life's work, and the work of his contemporaries.

Joannides will trace Titian's early, varied color and paint-handling techniques to his more restrained, narrative style and his move towards mythological subject matter.

Joannides is a professor of art history at Cambridge University, where he earned his doctoral degree. He has published many articles, essays, catalogues, and books.

This Agnes Lynch Anderson and Roger Lewis Anderson Lecture is co-presented by the Department of Public Programs and the Paintings Affinity Group of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Friends Lecture

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Diane Katsiaficas

Free

Africa and Europe During the Renaissance

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Heather Shirey

As early as the 15th century, long before Picasso and other modernists were drawn to African art, Portuguese collectors developed a fascination with ivories and bronzes from the coastal regions of West Africa. Portuguese presence in Africa over the course of nearly two centuries had a tremendous impact on the already flourishing royal workshops in West Africa.

This lecture will explore sculptural works produced by African artists as well as prints and paintings made by European artists during the Renaissance.

Shirey is an assistant professor of art history at the University of St. Thomas, where she teaches courses on Africa and the African diaspora. She earned a Ph.D. in art history at Indiana University.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

In Search of King Midas: New Discoveries and Reinterpretations of Gordion (Turkey)

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Andrew Goldman

For over a half-century, the University of Pennsylvania Museum has conducted excavations at the ancient site of Gordion in central Turkey. The site is best known as the capital of the Iron Age kingdom of Phrygia and the home of the legendary King Midas, who ruled around 725 B.C. and whose enormous wealth and power spawned enduring legends of his "golden touch." The ongoing excavations at Gordion have unveiled a complex society and shed light on the history of this elusive ruler. Recent research at the site has substantially improved our understanding of Phrygian culture and other aspects of the site's three thousand years of occupation. New archaeological techniques and fresh study of previous finds have produced significant new interpretations about the site's history, its multicultural heritage, and the unheralded preeminence of Phrygian culture in ancient Anatolia.

Goldman is chair of the Classical Civilizations Department, Gonzaga University. Since 1992, he has been an active member of the excavation team at Gordion, where he studies the economic and social history of the small Roman-period settlement that flourished there between the 1st and 5th centuries.

Free; no reservations required.

Quest for Enlightenment: Buddhist Monks in Medieval China

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Karil Kucera

This lecture will look at the material manifestations of the monastic experience in Tang dynasty China to understand the varying approaches taken by medieval clergy to reach enlightenment. Kucera will discuss how items such as hand-written and woodblock-printed scriptures, statues, and textiles fit within the framework of day-to-day monastic practice. Related later materials will highlight both continuity and change within monastic traditions.

Kucera is a professor in the Asian Studies and Art and Art History departments at St. Olaf College. He has traveled extensively throughout East, Southeast and South Asia studying humankind's quest for the divine.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

Titian's Poesie for Philip II: The Triumph of the Brush

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Steven F. Ostrow

Between about 1553 and 1562, the great Venetian painter Tiziano Vecellio executed a series of six erotic, mythological paintings for King Philip II of Spain. The painter drew largely from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and referred to the six paintings as poesie (poetry), which he intended to elicit emotion. This lecture will present Titian's extraordinary cycle of poesie, with special consideration given to each painting's thematic, theoretical, and technical complexities.

Ostrow is professor and chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota. A specialist in early modern Italian visual arts, he is the author books, articles, and critical essays.

This lecture is co-presented by the Center for Early Modern History at the University of Minnesota.

Admission $15; $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323, or reserve tickets online.

Friends Lecture

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Sarah Thornton

Free

The Mid-Twentieth-Century Church: Medieval Modernism?

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Victoria Young

This talk will present an architectural history of mid-twentieth-century churches worldwide, considering not only the style and technological innovations of these buildings, but also the role of liturgy and ritual within. Medieval design and liturgical notions come through in the modernism of the twentieth century. Young will compare medieval abbeys such as St. Denis in Paris with modern counterparts such as St. John's University in Collegeville. She will demonstrate that even though architectural styles may differ, the function and use of the buildings have striking similarities.

Young is an associate professor of modern architecture and the allied arts at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and director of its graduate program in art history. She is currently writing a book on Marcel Breuer's designs for Saint John's Abbey.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

Clothing The Mourners: Into the Fold

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Shelly Nordtorp-Madson

The late medieval period was one of great artistic change. Italian painters are usually credited with the sweeping developments in realism that appeared and spread in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. However, the astounding sculptural work of Claus Sluter for the tomb figures of Phillip the Bold of Burgundy reveal an interest in portraying reality that may have been ahead of his Italian counterparts. It is in the sculpted drapery that the new individualization of form can be seen most clearly. Nordtorp-Madson will illustrate with images from the exhibition "The Mourners," currently on view.

Nordtorp-Madson holds an M.A. in art history and a Ph.D. in the history of design, both from the University of Minnesota, and studied dress design and draping at the Bloch Tilskaer Institut in Denmark. She is chief curator at the University of St. Thomas, where she teaches medieval art and apparel history.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

Perfect Deceptions: 17th-century Dutch Still Lifes and Landscapes in the MIA

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Alison Kettering

The MIA's strong 17th-century Dutch holdings are particularly rich in still lifes and landscapes by important artists such as Claesz, Mignon, Ruysdael, Hobbema, Wouwerman, and van Goyen, as well as those by lesser-known painters such as Delff, who produced the MIA's fascinating Kitchen Still Life around 1669. This talk will place the MIA pictures in their stylistic and historical contexts, examining their pictorial and iconographical conventions, issues, knowledge, and appeal to viewers. Although realistic in appearance, these paintings often evoke contradictory meanings.

Kettering is Kenan Professor of Art History at Carleton College in Northfield. She is a scholar of 17th-century Dutch art and has published widely on the subject.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

Splendid Sponsors: Art Patrons of Sixteenth-Century Venice

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Kristin Huffman Lanzoni

The Venetian Republic, its corporate entities, and wealthy individuals commissioned some of the most spectacular art of early modern Europe. Venice's thriving mercantile economy and opportunity for work attracted a number of the most influential artists of all time, such as Titian. This talk will examine a range of patrons who participated in the adornment of the city during the 16th century, a high point in both artistic production and urban renewal. It will also consider how artists, such as Tintoretto and Bassano, capitalized on opportunities presented by patrons to promote their exceptional talents.

Huffman Lanzoni is an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Macalester College, St. Paul, focusing on art patronage of early modern Venice.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

The Origins of Money: Coinage, Art and the Construction of Value in the Ancient Mediterranean

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: John K. Papadopoulos

One of the most critical developments in Mediterranean history was the invention of coinage. The quest for metals--the commodities that define Greek time periods (Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age)--ultimately led to an economic system of exchange. The culmination was the invention of coinage, which first occurred in western Anatolia and eastern Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., an innovation with global consequences.

This lecture will focus on the early coinage of several Greek centers, and the emblems they chose for their coins, images that hark back to prehistoric measures of value, such as cattle, bronze, and grain. By boldly minting their collective identities on silver coins, the Greek city-states used money to create relationships of dominance and to produce social orders that had not existed before.

Papadopoulos is chair of the Department of Classics, UCLA. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Sydney and has excavated widely in Australia, Greece, Italy, and Albania. His most recent publication is The Art of Antiquity: Piet de Jong and the Athenian Agora (2007).

FREE! No reservations required.

Friends Lecture

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Joanna Woods-Marsden

Free

Monuments, Memorials, and Middle Ages: Medieval Chinese Art in Comparative Perspective

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Winston Kayan

While the traditional divisions of Chinese history have followed the rise and fall of dynasties, the term "medieval" has recently been used to describe China's past from the third to the tenth centuries, when Buddhist art, practice, and belief altered all aspects of Chinese culture.

This lecture explores sacred and secular ideas by focusing on the Minneapolis Institute of Arts's rich collection of Chinese art from the period. Participants will engage in broader debates on comparative medievalism.

Kayan received his Ph.D. in art history from the University of Chicago, and is currently an assistant professor of art history at the University of Utah. He has taught at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Macalester College, St. Paul, and his essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications. He is currently completing a book about the relationship between filial piety and Buddhist art in medieval China.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

Friends Lecture

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Eike Schmidt

Free

The Fabric of Suburbia

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: John Archer

Often stereotyped as sterile and monocultural, suburbia today comprises a rich and diverse part of the American cultural landscape. For over a half-century, artists, writers, and critics have been examining this landscape, questioning the prevailing assumptions, and exploring new paradigms of experience. This lecture examines statements made by such artists, as they reveal, inform, and critique suburban life today.

Archer is professor and chair of the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. His teaching, research, and writing have covered topics ranging from eighteenth-century landscape gardens, to colonial cities of South Asia, to the history and critique of present-day American suburbia. His book Architecture and Suburbia won the 2007 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

From Optics to Objects: Painting from 1960 to Today

Pillsbury Auditorium

Lecturer: Ross Elfline

Over the past 50 years, a profound shift has occurred in how we define painting. Artists once attempted to dazzle the viewer with the unique optical effects that can only occur when oil paint is applied to canvas. But artists from the Minimalist School, such as Frank Stella, Donald Judd, John McCracken, and Robert Mangold, instead treated the surface of the canvas as a discrete object. In recent years, artists such as Takashi Murakami have gone one step further by presenting paintings not only as objects, but also as luxury goods, covering the works' flat surfaces with commercial logos and copyrighted characters.

This talk will chart painting's progress from works of optical transcendence to objects of luxury and taste.

Elfline received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and teaches art history at Carleton College. He is an art and architectural historian whose research and course offerings focus on the history, theory, and criticism of art and architecture since 1945.

$15, $10 for MIA members. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or go to artsmia.org.

Art of the Native Americans: The Thaw Collection

Coming Soon!

Sunday, October 24, 2010—Sunday, January 9, 2011
Target Gallery
Ticketed Exhibition (FREE for members!)

more »