LECTURES

BUSCH-REISINGER MUSEUM SYMPOSIUM
Tables of Content
Saturday, April 12
Sackler lecture hall
Free admission
9 a.m., coffee
9:30 a.m.–4:15 p.m., symposium
Brochure

M. Victor Leventritt Symposia
Bauhaus Palimpsest: The Object of Discourse
Friday and Saturday, March 14 and 15
Sackler lecture hall
Free admission
Brochure

Modern/Age
Saturday, April 5
Sackler lecture hall
Free admission
9 a.m., coffee
9:30 a.m.–5 p.m., symposium
5 p.m., reception
Brochure

Cities: Their Art and Architecture
Wednesdays, March 26 and April 23
Norton lecture hall, Fogg, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
Single lectures $18; $12 for Members. Registration is strongly encouraged; please call 617-495-4544.
Brochure

This year’s installment of the series concludes with talks by two Harvard University professors who will focus on the visual and cultural histories of two intriguing cities.

Wednesday, March 26
Cape Town: City of Two Oceans and a Mountain
Kathleen M. Coleman, professor of Latin

Wednesday, April 23
Vienna, Decorous and Indecorous
Peter J. Burgard, professor of German

Participants may dine at the Harvard Faculty Club, 20 Quincy Street, following each lecture. A dish inspired by the cuisine of the city being presented that evening will be served. For reservations, please contact the Faculty Club directly at 617-495-5758.

Exploring South Asian Photography
This year-long series, presented by the Department of Islamic and Later Indian Art and the Department of Photographs, explores historical issues and current practices of photography in South Asia.

Wednesdays, April 2 and May 7
Sackler lecture hall, 6 p.m.
Free admission
Brochure


Since the development of photography in the 19th century, South Asia has been a favorite location for its practice. The birth of the nations of India and Pakistan, in particular, coincided with the evolution of the handheld camera, allowing photojournalists to capture the struggles and triumphs of those transitional years. Photography thrives in the region today, as photographers document lives and events, explore personal and conceptual geographies, and interrogate and challenge social and political norms.

Wednesday, April 2
A Conversation with Photographers

Ram Rahman is a social activist and documentarian with a rich body of street photog-raphy. Sunil Gupta’s work reflects his experiences in India and abroad and explores such issues as sexuality and public vs. private life. Both photographers work in New Delhi.

Wednesday, May 7
Women Photographers in India
Art historian Sabeena Gadihoke of Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, excavates the histories of early modern women photographers in India, focusing on the life and work of photojournalist Homai Vyarawalla, who will join the conversation as a special guest.

Norma Jean Calderwood Lecture

The Norma Jean Calderwood Lecture Fund honors a longtime friend of the Harvard University Art Museums who pursued graduate study in Islamic art at Harvard and who for many years taught Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Aesthetics of Ornament in the Ottoman and Safavid Regimes of Visuality
Gülru Necipoglu, Harvard University
Wednesday, April 9
Sackler lecture hall, 6 p.m.
Wednesdays, April 2 and May 7
Sackler lecture hall, 6 p.m.
Free admission
Brochure

Searching for the decorative “essence” of Islamic art in its formative period, European Orientalists at the turn of the 20th century singled out the so-called arabesque as its principal characteristic. Islamic ornament was generally classified within four categories—vegetal, geometric, epigraphic, figural—a taxonomy that continues today. Gülru Necipoglu first considers medieval Islamic written sources and their subsequent echoes in early modern texts on the visual arts. She then compares the aesthetics of ornament in the Ottoman and Safavid empires during the 16th century, when these rival polities developed their own languages of abstract design.

Ilse and Leo Mildenberg Memorial Lecture
To honor the memory of renowned numismatist and scholar Leo Mildenberg (1913–2001) and his years of friendship with Harvard University, a fund was established by his friends and colleagues and endowed in 2005 by his wife, Ilse Mildenberg-Seehausen.

The Coinage of the Persians
Michael Alram, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Thursday, April 17

Sackler lecture hall, 6 p.m.
Free admission

Persian coinage was one of Leo Mildenberg’s main research topics. Michael Alram will present an overview of the royal coinage of the Achaemenid Empire and the various other currencies struck under Persian authorities in Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, and Afghanistan.

M. VICTOR LEVENTRITT PROGRAMS
The M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Fund was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and Greater Boston communities.

M. Victor Leventritt Lecture on Latin American Art
Alejandro Otero: A Voluntary Reality
Luis Pérez Oramas, Museum of Modern Art
Wednesday, March 5
Sackler lecture hall, 6 p.m.
Free admission
Brochure


Through his 1945–51 correspondence with Venezuelan art critic Alfredo Boulton, we can trace the thinking and production of Venezuelan artist Alejandro Otero (1921–1990) and his process of finding what he called a “voluntary reality leaning toward monstrosity.” During his career, Otero switched several times between a naturalistic form of art that addressed the world as representation and a voluntarily denaturalized form: an art as a voluntary reality. At every radical achievement of this abstraction, Otero’s work confronts the elements of nature and the world as landscape.