Art History Lecture Series
Spring 2008
Art History Lecture Series
Fall 2007
“Expanding Egypt’s Tourism Potential:
The Little-Known Coptic Monasteries”
Dr. Shaza Ismail
Tuesday September 18th 6:30 P.M.
Temple University Main Campus
Tuttleman Learning Center 307
13th Street & Montgomery Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19122
Dr. Shaza Ismail is a short-term visiting
scholar in the Department of Art History,
Temple University. This is her second visit
to Temple, last summer she came on a
Fulbright grant for four months. Presently,
she has returned on a grant from the
Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education. Dr.
Ismail teaches at the Faculty of Tourism and
Hotel Management, Helwan University, Cairo.
She received her Masters from her home
university and her PhD was a joint
supervision between Helwan University and
the University of South Wales, Swansea, UK.
African Impressions / Contemporary Art
“Fist & Foot: Black Dance in Visual Art”
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 5:30PM - 8:30PM
CONFERENCE SPEAKERS:
Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild,
Author/Performer & Professor Emerita, Temple
University
Odili Donald Odita, Artist and Associate
Professor of Painting, Tyler School of Art
Dr. Gaynell Sherrod, Assistant Professor of
Dance, Florida A&M University
Dr. Robert Farris Thompson, Col. John
Trumbull Professor of the History of Art,
Yale University
SYMPOSIUM MODERATOR:
Dr. Leslie King-Hammond, Dean of Graduate
Studies, Maryland Institute College of Art
PERFORMANCE BY Kariamu & Company: Traditions
Dr. Kariamu Welsh, Artistic Director and
Dance Department Chair, Temple University
Temple University Main Campus
Conwell Hall Dance Theater, 5th Floor of
Conwell Hall
NE Corner of Broad Street and Montgomery
Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19122
African Impressions / Contemporary Art is a
series of symposia and events that explore
modern and contemporary art from the
perspective of African influences and
voices. The aesthetics and social history of
the African Diaspora have had an impact on
many visual artists, yet this remains
under-represented in art historical
scholarship. Each event brings a
multi-faceted and holistic experience of art
and art criticism to the university audience
and to the broader Philadelphia public by
including established artists, scholars,
curators, and performers.
This third symposium in the series presents
artists who are investigating the powerful
impact of dances of the African Diaspora in
popular culture and contemporary art.
Following the talks, there will be a
performance by Kariamu & Company: Traditions
of The Museum Piece. The event is curated by
Sophie Sanders, PhD candidate in Art
History, Tyler School of Art of Temple
University with support from Dr. Kariamu
Welsh, Professor and Dance Department Chair,
Boyer College of Music, Temple University.
Conference Participants:
Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild,
Author/Performer & Professor Emerita, Dance
Studies, Temple University is a cultural
historian and performer. Gottschild
graduated from the Performance Studies
Department of New York University. She
performs with her husband, choreographer
Hellmut Gottschild, in collaborative work
for which they have coined the term,
"movement theater discourse.” Dr. Gottschild
is also a senior consultant and writer for
Dance Magazine. She is author of The Black
Dancing Body (2003; winner of the 2004 de la
Torre Bueno Prize for excellence); Waltzing
in the Dark (2000; winner of the 2001
Congress on Research in Dance Award for
Outstanding Scholarship); and Digging the
Africanist Presence in American Performance
(1996).
Odili Donald Odita, Artist, is an Associate
Professor of Painting at Tyler School of
Art, and formerly a Visiting Critic in
Painting at Yale University School of Art.
Odita was a critic for Flash Art
International, and a writer and consulting
editor for NKA, Journal of Contemporary
African Art. Odita has exhibited extensively
including representing North America in 2004
at the Dakar Biennale of Contemporary
African Art, Senegal, and he is represented
by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and
Haunch of Venison, Zurich. In November 2006,
Odita had his one-person exhibition, Fusion
at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. Odita
was selected by curator Robert Storr to
participate in the 52nd Venice Biennale in
summer 2007.
Dr. Gaynell Sherrod, Assistant Professor of
Dance, Florida A&M University studied dance
with Dr. Kariamu Welsh, Pearl Reynolds, Joan
Meyers Brown and other acclaimed
choreographers. She earned a BA in
Psychology from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, after 15 years of
performing with such companies as Philadanco
and Urban Bush Women, she earned a M.Ed. and
Ed.D. in dance education from Temple
University in Philadelphia. A
Fulbright-Hayes scholar, Dr. Sherrod taught
at Florida A&M University, New Jersey City
University, and New York University. She has
served as Director of Dance Pedagogy for New
York City Department of Education and
Executive Director of Touring for the
Philadelphia Dance Company.
Robert Farris Thompson, Col. John Trumbull
Professor of the History of Art, Yale
University is among the most respected
scholars of African Art. He has organized
several major exhibitions, including The
Four Moments of the Sun (1981) and The Face
of the Gods: Shrines and Altars of the Black
Atlantic World (1985) at the National
Gallery of Art. Dr. Thompson has received
many research grants, including support from
the Ford Foundation (1962-1964) and the
National Gallery of Art (1977, 1979, 1980)
to name a few. He has produced an immense
number of catalogues and books; several
recent works include: Flash of the Spirit:
African and Afro-American Art and
Philosophy. (New York: Vintage, 1984); with
Georges Meurant, Mbuti Design: Paintings by
Pygmy Women from the Ituri Forest. (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1995); Tango: The Art
History of Love. (Vintage, 2006).
Dr. Kariamu Welsh, Artistic Director of
Kariamu & Company: Traditions and Professor
and Dance Department Chair, Temple
University received her Doctorate of Arts
from New York University and her MA.H. from
the State University of New York at Buffalo.
She has written extensively on African and
African Diasporan dance. Dr. Welsh was the
founding artistic director of the National
Dance Company of Zimbabwe and she has
choreographed works for the African American
Dance Ensemble, Seventh Principle,
Philadanco and her own company Kariamu &
Company: Traditions. Dr. Welsh has received
numerous grants and awards including the Pew
Artist Fellowship and the Simon Guggeheim
Fellowship. Dr. Welsh is also on the
registry as a Fulbright Specialist in
African Dance.
Symposia Moderator:
Dr. Leslie King-Hammond, Dean of Graduate
Studies, Maryland Institute College of Art,
Scholar, Curator, and Artist received her
doctorate in Art History from The Johns
Hopkins University in 1976. Some of Dr.
King-Hammond’s recent exhibitions and
publications include Three Generations of
African American Women Sculptors: A Study in
Paradox; Over the Line: The Art and Life of
Jacob Lawrence (University of Washington
Press, 2000); Sugar and Spice: The Art of
Bettye Saar (Michael Rosenfeld Gallery,
2003); “Aminah Robinson: Aesthetic
Realities/Artistic Vision” in The Art of
Aminah Robinson (Columbus Museum of Art,
2003); and “Inner Being/Altered States:
Painting the Life-Worlds of Beverly McIver’s
Realities” in The Many Faces of Beverly
McIver (40 Acres Gallery, 2004).
King-Hammond is Chairperson of the
Collections and Exhibits Committee at the
Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African
American History & Culture.
Performance:
Kariamu & Company: Traditions is a
collection of professional dancers who seek
to broaden and deepen the genre of African
dance with contemporary choreography, music,
and poetry. Using the Umfundalai technique,
Kariamu & Company: Traditions reaches its
audiences with political, social, and
cultural commentary situated in African
Diasporan contexts.
Kariamu & Company has been creating
soul-stirring dance works since 1970, the
birth of Umfundalai. In its thirty years of
excellence, the base of the company moved
from Buffalo, New York to Zimbabwe, South
Africa to its current home in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. The current Traditions company
was started in 1996 in preparation for
Kariamu & Company's home season concert and
its inception demarcates the third
generation of Umfundalai dancers, singers,
and poets.
The Museum Piece
Choreography by Kariamu Welsh
Africans have literally and metaphorically
been placed in an exhibit for centuries.
From the auction block to mounted wall “art”
to the “smiling jockey” that graced a good
number of lawns during the past century, the
African on exhibit is a nostalgic part of
Americana. The Museum Piece inverts and
hopefully subverts the idea of inspection,
introspection and exhibit. This work
examines as it is being examined and finally
begs the question, “Who are you looking at
and why?”
“The Shroud of Turin as Visual Culture”
John Beldon Scott
Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 5:00pm Lecture
and Reception
Temple University Main Campus
Tuttleman Learning Center 307
13th Street & Montgomery Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19122
John Beldon Scott, Professor in Art History,
Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor of the Arts,
received the B.A. from Indiana University
(1968) and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from
Rutgers University (1975, 1982). His field
of teaching and research is the art and
architecture of Early Modern Italy. He is
the author of Images of Nepotism: The
Painted Ceilings of Palazzo Barberini
(Princeton, 1991) and Architecture for the
Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin (Chicago,
2003). The latter book was awarded the 2004
College Art Association Charles Rufus Morey
Prize. His other publications include
studies of Borromini, Pietro da Cortona,
Annibale Carracci, Bernini, the patronage of
the Barberini family, and urbanism in early
modern Turin. His articles have appeared in
Art Bulletin, Burlington Magazine, Memoirs
of the American Academy in Rome, Storia
dell'Arte, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, and Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians. He has
been a fellow at the American Academy in
Rome, the National Humanities Center, the
Institute for Advanced Study, and the
Stanford Humanities Center. He has served on
the Board of Directors of the Society of
Architectural Historians (1997-2000). He is
currently preparing a monograph on Borromini.
"Renoir and the Modern Landscape:
Reflections of the New Economy ”
James Rubin
Monday, October 22nd, 2007 3:00pm Lecture
Temple University Main Campus
Tuttleman Learning Center 307
13th Street & Montgomery Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19122
Renoir and the Modern Landscape: Reflections
of the New Economy. Among the aims of the
Impressionists was to forge a "modern
landscape," discarding nostalgic views of
nature for a reflection of their
contemporary surroundings. Although
Impressionism is associated primarily with
scenes of pleasure and leisure, this
presentation will argue that representations
of contemporary economic and industrial
activities were equally at the heart of the
Impressionists' concept of modernity. It
recognizes, however, that different painters
gave such themes more or less priority in
their imagery. It will assess Renoir's
position within the range of modern
landscape possibilities as exemplified by
the other Impressionists who were his
friends and cohorts.
James Rubin was educated at Yale, Harvard
and the University of Paris and has taught
at Harvard, Princeton and for the past 25
years at Stony Brook, the State University
of New York. He has published over 30
articles and essays on subjects ranging from
the eighteenth-century to the present. His
specialty is French art of the Realist and
Impressionist period. He has written 9
books, including two on the painter Gustave
Courbet, one on Edouard Manet, and three on
Impressionism. His book Impressionism in the
‘Art and Ideas’ series by Phaidon press is
used in many college courses in North
America. His most recent book was
Impressionist Cats and Dogs: Pets in the
Painting of Modern Life, which looks closely
at a previously unnoticed aspect of
Impressionist paintings. He is currently
finishing a new monograph on Edouard Manet,
due in 2009. Today’s lecture is related to a
book which is currently in press, called
Impressionism and the Modern Landscape:
Productivity, Technology and Urbanization
from Manet to Van Gogh.
