'The Young Radical at 50: Edvard Munch in 1913' is a lecture by Curator Dr. Patricia Berman. Scholar and Curator Patricia Berman discusses critical period in the art of Edvard Munch at Scandinavia House on November 17th. The lecture is held in conjunction with special exhibition Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America, 1912.
The American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF) presents a lecture by internationally renowned scholar Patricia G. Berman, professor of art history at Wellesley College and the University of Oslo, and curator of Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America, 1912. The exhibition is on view at Scandinavia House through February 11, 2011.
Dr. Berman will discuss the work and career of Edvard Munch in the years 1912-13, when, already a celebrated artist throughout Europe, he first exhibited in North America, in the first exhibition to be organized by ASF. Also during this period, Munch worked on a monumental mural project in Kristiania (Oslo), and developed new techniques that reanimated his art.
About Patricia Berman:
Patricia Gray Berman, a leading specialist in early modern Scandinavian art, is professor of art history at Wellesley College and the University of Oslo's Institute for Philosophy, the History of Ideas, Art History, and Classical Studies.
The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Dr. Berman has curated or co-curated many important exhibitions, including, most recently, I Munchs Laboratorium: Veien til aulen (In Munch's Laboratory: The Road to the Festival Hall; co-curator), which opened in September 2011 at the Munch Museum, Oslo. She is a prolific author, and is currently working on the book Edvard Munch: Fashioning the Self and the Nation.
About the Exhibition:
Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America, 1912, brings together 48 works by Nordic artists who embraced, and pioneered, the transformative aesthetic innovations that swept the European continent during late 19th- and early 20th-centuries. It looks back at the first exhibition organized by ASF, a 1912 survey of contemporary Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish painting that traveled to Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, and Toledo following its debut in New York City. The exhibition had an enormous impact in and beyond the cities to which it traveled. Reviewers used words like "radical" to describe the work it contained; artists like Marsden Hartley were strongly affected by it; and in each of those four cities it drew some of the largest audiences of any art exhibition up to that time. Although it was eclipsed just two months after it closed by the arrival of the more radical Armory Show, the ASF-organized exhibition and its reception constitute a significant chapter in the history of art and culture in America.
Luminous Modernism, which features 20 of the same artists and eight of the same works presented in the 1912 exhibition, provides a rich picture of that earlier presentation and what visitors found so compelling about it. Moreover, it has been expanded in scope to encompass all five Nordic countries, including Finland and Iceland, thereby illustrating the full range of artistic expression throughout the region during this period.
$10 ($7 ASF Members); includes exhibition admission
Gallery hours extended until 9 pm evening of lecture
For lecture reservations, call 212.847.9740 or email event_reservation@amscan.org.