Visiting Scholar Diane Favro to lecture Feb. 29

Diane Favro
Diane Favro

Visiting Scholar Diane Favro to lecture Feb. 29

calendar icon24 Feb 2016    

Lincoln, Neb.--Diane Favro will present the next lecture of the Hixson-Lied Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Series on Monday, Feb. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15 on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln city campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Her lecture on Roman archaeology, titled “Marble Parades:  Celebrating Materiality in Augustan Rome” is sponsored by the Hixson-Lied Endowment, Department of Art and Art History and the Lincoln-Omaha Society of the Archaeological Institute of America. She will discuss how the Emperor Augustus celebrated the architectural transformation of Rome by means of celebratory parades.

The Roman emperor Augustus boasted he transformed Rome from a city of brick to one of marble. Cut into crisply fitted ashlar blocks and sparkling monolithic columns, this heavy, expensive stone conveyed strength, endurance, economic success and cultural sophistication. Yet it wasn’t just the medium that was the message. Emulating the paths and audience attraction of Roman Triumphal processions, the lengthy parades transporting huge stones to building sites in Rome reinforced a calculated propaganda.

Favro is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Associate Dean of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. Her research explores the urbanism of ancient Rome, archaeological historiography, women in architecture and new technologies in humanistic research.

She has written on subjects ranging from Armenian architectural symbolism to urban armatures in Roman Asia Minor and depictions of women architects in American advertising. A new major work is Roman Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge University Press) co-authored with Fikret Yegül.

As a founder of the UCLA CVRLab and the UCLA Experiential Technologies Center, Favro was an early adopter of 3-D, real-time digital modeling for historical research, receiving large grants (NEH, NSF, Intel) for such pioneering, award-winning projects as the Digital Roman Forum and Digital Karnak. She was President of the national Society of Architectural Historians (2002-04) and a Resident at the American Academy in Rome (2014).

Her current work applies the techniques of procedural modeling and BIM (Building Information Modeling) to the interrogation of historical buildings and urban environments.

The Hixson-Lied Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Series is underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment, with additional support from other sources. The program brings notable artists, scholars and designers to UNL’s Department of Art and Art History, enhancing the education of students and enriching the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design.

Richards Hall is located at Stadium Drive and T sts. For more information, contact the Department of Art and Art History at (402) 472-5522.

The remaining Hixson-Lied Visiting Artists & Scholars Lectures are:

ArtStream, the mobile pottery gallery, will be at UNL March 7-8. Three guest artists will be coming, including Ayumi Horie, Lorna Meaden and Lisa Orr. Each artist will give an artist talk and demonstration during the visit. Monday, March 7:  11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. artist talk by Lisa Orr in Richards Hall Rm. 118; 2-5 p.m. Demos by all three artists in Richards Hall Rm. 118. Tuesday, March 8:  10:30-11:30 a.m. artist talk by Ayumi Horie in Richards Hall Rm. 118; 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. artist talk by Lorna Meaden in Richards Hall Rm. 118; 2-5 p.m. Demos by all three artists in Richards Hall Rm. 118.

• Sculptor Carlton Newton, March 31 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Newton is currently on the faculty of the sculpture department at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he teaches courses in studio sculpture, contemporary art criticism and video and computer technology.

• Photographer Takashi Arai, April 5 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Beginning in 2010, Arai used the daguerreotype technique to create individual records or micro-monuments of his encounters with surviving crew members and the salvaged hull of the Daigo Fuküryumaru, a nuclear fallout-contaminated fishing boat. This project led him to photograph the deeply interconnected subjects of Fukushima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

•  Deb Sokolow, April 28 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Sokolow is a Chicago-based artist and a lecturer at Northwestern University. She is a 2012 recipient of an Artadia Grant and has participated in residencies nationally and internationally.