Interested in learning more about art history? Join us this Fall for a series of thought-provoking lectures!
Description: Art history is more than a series of facts about artists, artworks, dealers, and patrons. It is also a mode of inquiry that, over decades, indeed centuries, has been shaped by the writing and research of many different scholars. Taking this insight as its starting point, this short course of lectures introduces six prominent books that shaped art history as an academic discipline, framing these books alongside the authors who wrote them and the contexts in which they were written. By proceeding chronologically, the lectures introduce some of the key paradigms of art history as it is still practiced today: from connoisseurship and formal analysis to iconology, feminism, and the social history of art. These frameworks of interpretation can be applied to the art of any period and any geographic origin. However, because of the strength of Hill-Stead’s collection, the lectures will give special attention to the case of impressionism.
No previous course work in art history is required and no background reading is assigned. An informal syllabus of additional reading, however, is provided for those who are interested. Each lecture will run about 45 minutes. The sessions will be followed by a Q&A and informal wine reception.
Schedule (Fall 2024): Every other Thursday at 5:30PM at Hill-Stead. Lectures in the short course can be purchased individually or as a whole series.
- Oct. 10 – Bernard Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Italian Renaissance (1896)
- Oct. 24 – Heinrich Wölfflin, The Principles of Art History (1915)
- Nov. 7 – Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (1939)
- Nov. 21 – Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion (1960)
- Dec. 5 – Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (1971)
- Dec. 19 – T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life (1984)
Enrollment: Capped at 80. Seats are reserved on a first come first serve basis.
Tuition:
- Guides: Pay what you wish
- Members: $180 ($30 per lecture)
- Non-members: $210 ($35 per lecture)
About the Lecturer: C. Oliver O’Donnell, PhD is Director of Research and Academic Programs at Hill-Stead Museum as well as Senior Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to his current positions, he taught at the BA and MA level at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and at St. John’s University in New York. He has held full-time research appointments at the Warburg Institute of the University of London and at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, a Max Planck Institute. As a specialist in modern art, especially of the United States, Oliver’s research has appeared in leading scholarly journals such as The Art Bulletin, Word & Image, and Tate Papers; and his first monograph, which is a study of the pioneering art historian and New York intellectual Meyer Schapiro (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), won the Willibald Sauerländer Prize from the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. Educated at Washington University in St. Louis (B.A.; B.F.A.), the University of London (M.A.), and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.), Oliver is especially proud of his students, including many life-long learners, who have gone on to publish research that he supervised and to write PhD dissertations of their own. He currently serves as an Editor of Panorama: the Journal of the Association of Historian of American Art . Forthcoming publications include a monograph on portraiture as well as peer-reviewed essays on the Barnes Foundation and the Armory Show of 1913.