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 Symposia

Between Object and Event: Beuys and Fluxus in Context
Sackler lecture hall
Free admission; a reception will follow the talks on Friday night.

Introductory Talks
Friday, April 13, 5:30 p.m.
Jacob Proctor, Harvard University Art Museums
David Joselit, Yale University
Thierry de Duve, Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3

Broad in scope and perhaps the most speculative discussions of the symposium, these talks will present an overview of the exhibition Multiple Strategies: Beuys, Maciunas, Fluxus and the issues it raises.

Symposium
Saturday, April 14
9:30 a.m., coffee
10 a.m.-4:30 p.m., symposium
This symposium brings together leading scholars of Joseph Beuys, the avant-garde group Fluxus, and the art of the 1960s.

They will reconsider efforts by Beuys and Fluxus to revolutionize the nature of art and to redefine the artist's role in society. Issues to be considered include the influence of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, the intersection of art and capital, the importance of new models of distribution and reception, and the relationship between individual and collective action.

Participants will include Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Harvard University; Hannah Higgins, University of Illinois at Chicago; Pamela Kort, independent scholar, Berlin; Mario Kramer, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Harvard University; Barbara Moore, independent scholar, New York; Julia Robinson, Princeton University; and Joan Rothfuss, independent scholar, Minneapolis.

A New Social Order
Saturday, April 21
Sackler lecture hall
9 a.m., coffee
9:30 a.m.-4 p.m., symposium
Free admission

Presented in conjunction with Classified Documents: The Social Museum of Harvard University, 1903-1931, this symposium will place the imagery, ideology, and use of the Social Museum's collection of Progressive Era photographs and graphic illustrations in critical context. It will examine the science and sentiment behind the founding of the Social Museum, the display techniques employed at early 20th-century expositions and fairs, the social history of architecture and reform environments, issues of race and gender in early social reform photography, and the meaning of corporate welfare work.

Participants will include Elspeth H. Brown, University of Toronto; Julie K. Brown, independent scholar, San Antonio; Marta Gutman, City College of New York; Deborah Martin Kao, Harvard University Art Museums (HUAM); Michelle Lamunière, HUAM; Barbara Levy Simon, Columbia University School of Social Work; and Abigail A. Van Slyck, Connecticut College.

M. Victor Leventritt Lectures

M. Victor Leventritt Lecture on Latin American Art
Sackler lecture hall, 6 p.m.
Free admission

Wednesday, March 14
From the Inside Out: The Embodiment of Color in Hélio Oiticica's Work
Mari Carmen Ramírez, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) played a leading role in Brazil's Neo-Concrete movement during the 1960s. Oiticica explored color and its material presence through abstract paintings, works on paper, hanging sculptures, and extraordinary boxes, glass vessels, and parangolés (capes) of diverse materials meant for audience participation. Ramírez will focus on the artist's groundbreaking exploration of color, drawing from the 2006-7 exhibition Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color, which she curated at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Wednesday, April 18
Gabriel Orozco: A Conversation with Benjamin Buchloh
Gabriel Orozco, artist

Renowned artist Gabriel Orozco will talk with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art, in an open and engaging dialogue. Buchloh has written several seminal essays on the Mexican-born Orozco, whom he has known since early in the artist's career. The two will discuss a range of issues related to the ideas, work, current projects, and exhibitions of this leading figure in today's art world.

M. Victor Leventritt Lectures
Sackler lecture hall, 6 p.m.
Free admission

Tuesday, April 17
Ruskin, the American Pre-Raphaelites, and Harvard
Royal W. Leith, independent art historian, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Royal W. Leith, an authority on the American Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Roderick Newman, examines Harvard's key role in sustaining the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the United States beyond its brief heyday in the 1860s. He will devote particular attention to the little-known second generation of American Pre-Raphaelites, who carried the movement into the early years of the 20th century.

Thursday, April 26
Line, Shape, Color, Luster: Fernand Léger's Contrasts of Forms
Matthew Affron, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
6:30 p.m. (please note time)

Matthew Affron, guest curator of Fernand Léger: Contrasts of Forms, will explore a crucial period in Léger's art (1912-14). He will discuss the work of these years in terms of its radical formal language, its relationship to the cubist revolution in representation, and its significance for the development of abstraction in modern art.

Tuesday, May 1
The Cultivated Eye: Charles Herbert Moore Rediscovered
Virginia Anderson, assistant curator of American art

Charles Herbert Moore (1840-1930) won acclaim during his lifetime as an artist, critic, professor, architectural historian, and the first director of the Fogg Art Museum. Although little known today, Moore was a popular landscape painter of the Hudson River school who became an active member of the American Pre-Raphaelite circle. This lecture will look at Moore's artistic and professional evolution in light of his friendships with British critic John Ruskin and Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton.