UM hosts Harvard Art Museums speaker
Published 12:04 pm Monday, April 14, 2014
By GINNY COOPER/Staff Writer
MONTEVALLO—Mellisa Renn, senior curatorial research associate at Harvard Art Museums, will present a lecture at the University of Montevallo Tuesday, April 15 at 4:30 p.m.
Renn will present “Beyond the ‘Shingle Factory’: The Armory Show in the popular Press after 1913,” a historiographical study, which explores how the 1913 Armory Show was portrayed in popular media such as Life, Time and Vogue from the 1930s through the 1970s.
The Armory Show, officially titled the International Exhibition of Modern Art, introduced many Americans to avant-garde European art for the first time in 1913, and included works by Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cezanne and Wassily Kandinsky, as well as by American artists. It inspired, shocked, offended and enthralled viewers.
In her lecture, Renn examines the key role the media played in mythologizing and canonizing the Armory Show, as well as shaping its legacy as a controversial, watershed event in the history of modern art.
The lecture is free and open to the public as part of the Martha Allen Lecture Series in the Visual Arts and the UM Concert and Lecture Series. The lecture will be held in the Merchants and Planters Bank Auditorium in Comer Hall on the UM campus.