Distinguished art historian Janice Simon of the University of Georgia will visit the WVU College of Creative Arts Thursday, Oct. 8, where she will present the J. Bernard Schultz Lecture in Art History.

The lecture is titled “A Promise and A Revolution: the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the Armory Show of 1913” and will begin at 5 p.m. in the Creative Arts Center’s Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A). The event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Simon, who is associate professor of art and chair of art history at the University of Georgia, will compare the two exhibitions, focusing especially on whether the promised progress was achieved in American art within those 20 years.

Also known as The Chicago World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 had a profound effect on architecture and the arts.

The International Exhibition of Modern Art at New York City’s 69th Regiment Armory in 1913 introduced New Yorkers to modern art.

The J. Bernard Schultz Lecture Series in Art History was endowed in the College of Creative Arts in 2004 by donors who wish to remain anonymous. The Lecture Series honors current College of Creative Arts Dean Bernie Schultz, who is also professor of art history in the Division of Art and director of the Creative Arts Center.

Each year, the lecture series brings a leading art historian to WVU, to enhance the art history program, as well as engage the intellectual life of the University.

Previous lecturers have included Davis Summers, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Art Theory and Italian Renaissance Art at the University of Virginia; David Wilkins, professor emeritus of art history at the University of Pittsburgh; and Joann Moser, curator of graphic arts at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Dr. Simons’ work focuses on the art of the United States from colonial times through World War II. She was granted a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan with Great Distinction, her M.A. from the same institution, and her B.A. from SUNY/Buffalo summa cum laude, all in Art History. Her dissertation on the most important art periodical of pre-Civil War America, “The Crayon (1855-1861): The Voice of Nature in Criticism, Poetry, and the Fine Arts,” is widely cited.

She has been honored with numerous teaching awards including the University of Georgia’s highest honor for junior faculty, the Richard Russell Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching (1992), and the University’s most prestigious distinction, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship.

Her publications include “Images of Contentment: John F. Kensett and the Connecticut Shore,” and she is the co-editor of “Crossroads in American Impressionism at the Turn of the Century,” and author of chapters in “Classical Ground: Mid-Nineteenth Century American Painters and the Italian Encounter” and “Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture,” among others.

Among her current projects is an essay on William J. Stillman’s photographic album of the Adirondacks and passages that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote for “The Crayon,” which will be published in an upcoming book tentatively titled “The Cultured Canvas: Social History of the Hudson River School.”

The J. Bernard Schultz Lecture Series in Art History endowment was created through the WVU Foundation, a private non-profit corporation that generates and provides support for West Virginia University.

For more information about the lecture, contact the WVU College of Creative Arts at (304) 293-4841, Ext. 3108.

-WVU-

10/06/09

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CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4841 ext. 3108, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu