Lincoln, Neb.—Cultural historian Margaretta Lovell will present the next Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 16 at 5:30 p.m. at Sheldon Museum of Art’s Ethel S. Abbott Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Lovell works at the intersection of history, art/architectural history and anthropology. She holds the Jay D. McEvoy, Jr., Chair in the History of American Art at the University of California Berkeley and studies material culture, painting, architecture and design in England, France and North America from the 17th century to the present.
She received her Ph.D. in American studies at Yale University and has taught as a visiting professor in the History of Art departments at Stanford, Harvard and the University of Michigan. Having begun her teaching career at Yale, she has also held the Dittman Chair in American Studies at the College of William and Mary and the Ednah Root Curatorial Chair for American Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Her most recent book, “Painting the Inhabited Landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the Global Reach of Antebellum America” concerns an artist deeply embedded in antebellum New England. It investigates the nature of his artmaking within the global perspectives of his culture’s links with China, Puerto Rico, Ireland and California.
Her current research projects include an object biography of a pair of John Singleton Copley paintings involving global peregrinations of the Scottish diaspora in the wake of the defeat at Culloden and a book on the transatlantic Gilded Age with an emphasis on artists, photographers and architects whose work critiqued the dominant culture. She has also studied the work of painter Wayne Thiebaud and has investigated links between popular culture and photography today.
The remaining lectures in the series are:
• Oct. 30: Adrian Arleo and Jane Shellenbarger. The UNL Clay Club welcomes two visiting artists who will present successive lectures on Oct. 30. For the last 32 years, Arleo has lived and worked in Missoula, Montana. Her ceramic work is exhibited nationally and internationally and is in numerous public and private collections. In 1995, she was awarded a Montana Arts Council Individual Fellowship. Shellenbarger is a professor and graduate program director at Rochester Institute of Technology in the School for American Crafts. She established her studio pottery, Mill Station Pottery, in rural Hale, Michigan, in 1997.
• Nov. 6: Julia Blaut. Blaut is the senior director of curatorial affairs at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Celebrating the artist’s centennial, Blaut will deliver a lecture about Rauschenberg’s enduring legacy with special attention to his prints.
• Nov. 20: Pablo Helguera. Helguera is a visual artist living in New York and often considered a pioneering figure in the field of socially engaged art. His practice involves performance, drawing, pedagogy, installation, theater and other literary strategies. Coming from a family of classical musicians, his work also frequently includes musical elements.
• Dec. 4: Kristina Paabus. Paabus is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores systems of power, particularly in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts. Working primarily in printmaking, she exhibits internationally and teaches at Oberlin College, where she is associate professor of studio art in reproducible media.
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. The series is presented in collaboration with Sheldon Museum of Art.
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.
For more information on the series, contact the School of Art, Art History & Design at (402) 472-5522 or e-mail schoolaahd@unl.edu.
