Art historian Mazow presents next Hixson-Lied Visiting Scholar Lecture on “Edward Hopper’s ‘Hotel Consciousness’”
calendar icon28 Feb 2019
Lincoln, Neb.—Art Historian Leo G. Mazow will present the next Hixson-Lied Visiting Scholar Lecture on Wednesday, March 13 at 5:30 p.m. in the Sheldon Museum of Art’s auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Mazow will be discussing “Edward Hopper’s ‘Hotel Consciousness.’” He will consider Edward Hopper’s iconic painting “Room in New York,” which is owned by the Sheldon, alongside his commercial work for hotel trade journals.
His book, “Hopper’s Hotels,” explores the hotel, motel and boarding house subjects of Hopper’s body of work.
“This is a modest-size body of work—four hotel paintings, one motel painting, one boarding house painting, and several magazine covers—but it captures powerfully the themes of transience, waiting, and social alienation for which the artist is best known,” Mazow said.
Mazow is the Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA). He received his Ph.D. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
His articles have appeared in such journals as American Art, Art Bulletin, Design and Culture, and Winterthur Portfolio. His bookThomas Hart Benton and the American Sound won the 2013 Eldredge Prize, awarded by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Mazow is presently organizing two exhibitions and accompanying publications at VMFA: “Edward Hopper and the American Hotel” (2019–20) and “The Art of the American Guitar” (2022).
The School of Art, Art History & Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students. They are presenting Mazow’s lecture in collaboration with Sheldon Museum of Art. The lecture has also received support from the UNL Research Council and the Convocations Committee.
Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations.
The remaining lectures in the series are:
• April 11: Mary Pardo, art history. Pardo is an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. She specializes in Italian Renaissance art and art criticism.
• April 25: Alexander Ross, painting. Ross is represented by David Nolan Gallery in New York. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award; an Art Production Fund Fellowship; Residency at the Musée Claude Monet in Giverny, France; and an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Tesuque Foundation.
For more information on the series, contact the School of Art, Art History & Design at (402) 472-5522.