FREE LECTURES AND SYMPOSIA AT THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS IN FALL 1998

Contact: Kate McShea Ewen, (617) 495-2397
Released: August 10, 1998

The lectures and symposia listed below are free and open to the public. Complimentary parking is available at the Broadway Garage on Felton Street, between Cambridge Street and Broadway. For more information, please call (617) 495-4544. To request a sign language interpreter, the public should call (617) 495-2397 using Massachusetts Telephone Relay Service 1-800-439-2370 three weeks in advance of the event.

LECTURES
The Artist, the Printer, and the Lithograph
A series of two evening lectures offered in conjuction with the exhibition Touchstone: 200 Years of Artists' Lithographs. Illustrated in the lectures will be the divergence of scholarly opinion over wherein lies the key creative force in the production of lithographs. In the first lecture, Pat Gilmour will espouse the essential role of the printer in the creation of lithographs and, in the following week, Marjorie B. Cohn will respond by describing the unique capacity of the lithography technique to reflect the artist's touch unmediated by print processing.

M. Victor Leventritt Lecture*
Tuesday, October 6, Sackler lecture hall; 6:00 p.m.
Drawn to Print, with Pat Gilmour, visiting professor, University of East London

Lecture
Tuesday, October 13, Sackler lecture hall; 6:00 p.m
The Artist's Touch, with Marjorie B. Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Fogg Art Museum

Dinner reservations may be made at the Harvard Faculty Club, 24 Quincy Street, following the lectures by calling (617) 495-5653. The Faculty Club will kindly accept payment in cash or by credit card from non-members attending these lectures at the Harvard University Art Museums. Complimentary parking will be available at the Broadway Garage on Felton Street from 4:00 to 10:00 p.m.

SYMPOSIA
M. Victor Leventritt Symposium*
The Art of Japanese Lacquer
Saturday, September 26, 1998, 9:45 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum lecture hall
Beginning at at 9:00 a.m. visitors will be able to view the exhibition and Complimentary morning coffee will be available in the Sackler lobby.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition Symbol and Substance:The Elaine Ehrenkranz Collection of Japanese Lacquer Boxes, this day-long symposium will present lectures and films on various aspects of East Asian lacquer, providing an in-depth introduction to this vitally important artistic medium.

Speakers include Anne Rose Kitagawa, assistant curator for Japanese art; Robert D. Mowry, curator of Chinese art; Andrew M. Watsky, assistant professor of Japanese art, Vassar College; Ann Yonemura, associate curator of Japanese art, Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Printing Matters: The Materiality of Print in Early Modern Europe
Saturday, November 14; 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and
Sunday, November 15; 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Fogg Art Museum
This two-day symposium, organized by Graham Larkin and Lisa Pon, doctoral candidates in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, will bring together leading scholars to reflect upon the materiality of printed objects, both books and prints, in early modern Europe. Topics to be addressed will include such issues as the transitions between hand production and mechanical production, the ways in which typographic and layout conventions are invested with meaning, and the synthesis of visual and textual content. This material emphasis brings together text-based and image-based studies, challenging current disciplinary boundaries.

Cosponsored by Harvard's Department of History of Art and Architecture, this symposium is being presented in conjunction with the exhibitions Prints and Privileges: Regulating the Image in Sixteenth-Century Italy in the Fogg (October 1 through December 27) and Lines of Inquiry: Ancien Régime Book Illustration from the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts at Harvard's Houghton Library (September 2 through December 11).

Speakers include Lilian Armstrong, Mildred Lane Kemper Professor of Art, Wellesley College; Tom Conley, professor of romance languages and literatures, Harvard University; Brendan Dooley, associate professor of history and of social studies, Harvard University; Evelyn Lincoln, associate professor of history of art and architecture, Brown University; Walter Melion, professor of history of art, The Johns Hopkins University; Ramie Targoff, assistant professor of English, Yale University; Christopher Wood, associate professor of history of art, Yale University; and Abby Zanger, associate professor of romance languages and literatures, Harvard University. 

M. Victor Leventritt Symposium*
French Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Drawings, Prints and Book Illustration
Saturday, December 5, 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Arthur M. Sackler Museum lecture hall

This international symposium is presented on the occasion of the opening of Mastery and Elegance: Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz and in conjunction with Lines of Inquiry: Ancien Régime Book Illustrations from the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts at Harvard's Houghton Library (September 2 through December 11 , 1998), and French Prints from the Age of the Musketeers, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (October 21, 1998 through January 10, 1999). The symposium will bring together French, British and American scholars to discuss: the work and careers of such major artists as Abraham Bosse, Charles de la Fosse, François Boucher, Charles-Nicolas Cochín, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Jean-Baptiste Greuze; the connections between fine art and popular imagery; and the interrelationships of drawings, prints, and book illustrations.

Speakers for the symposium include: Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Jeffrey E. Horvitz Research Curator, Department of Drawings, Fogg Art Museum; Carter Foster, assistant curator of drawings, Cleveland Museum of Art; Margaret Morgan Grasselli, curator of old master drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Jo Hedley, curator of paintings before 1800, The Wallace Collection, London; Suzanne Folds McCullagh, curator of earlier prints and drawings, The Art Institute of Chicago; Jean-François Méjanès, conservateur-en-chef au Département des Arts Graphiques, Musée du Louvre, Paris; Edgar Munhall, curator, The Frick Collection, New York; Maxime Préaud, conservateur-en-chef de la Reserve, Département des Estampes, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; Sue Welsh Reed, associate curator of prints and drawings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Marianne Roland Michel, independent scholar and director emeritus, Galerie Cailleux, Paris; and Xavier Salmon, curator of drawings and eighteenth-century French paintings, Musée et château de Versailles.

Symposium Reception
Saturday, December 5, 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., Houghton Library, Quincy Street, Cambridge
Following the symposium French Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Drawings, Prints and Book Illustration the public is invited to a reception in the Houghton Exhibition Room to view Lines of Inquiry: Ancien Régime Book Illustrations from the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts.

*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.

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The Harvard University Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible. For general information, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea Ewen at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please contact the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

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The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and to all on Saturday mornings and all day on Wednesdays. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June; Wednesdays only in July and August. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m. The Harvard University Art Museums is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.