The 27th Annual Hilla Rebay Lecture
Tuesday, January 27, 6:30pm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
5th Avenue at 89th Street
New York City
Hollis Clayson, Professor of Art History and Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University, will deliver The 27th Annual Hilla Rebay Lecture, titled “Episodes from the Visual Culture of Electric Paris” at the Guggenheim on January 27.
Clayson’s analysis of the visual culture of the French capital city takes root in the often overlooked fact that lighting (éclairage) was a key attribute of the City of Light in the 19th century. The pitched social, aesthetic, and technical debate about new forms of artificial illumination took shape along an axis defined by dazzle (blindness) at one end, and illumination (visibility) at the other. Clayson maintains that the new lights, their visual properties, and the era’s debates about them provided circumstances that stimulated aesthetically innovative art gingerly balanced vis-à-vis the lights themselves between rejection and embrace, between disavowal and enthusiasm. Her lecture will analyze works by Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent and several of the era’s leading caricaturists.
This event is free, with no advanced registration required. Admission will be granted on a first-come-first-served basis.
The Annual Hilla Rebay Lecture brings distinguished scholars to the Guggenheim Museum to examine significant issues in the theory, criticism, and history of art. In 2014, Darby English, then Starr Director of Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute delivered “Local Color circa 1971.” Other previous lecturers include Linda Nochlin (1988), Timothy J. Clark (1999), Thomas Crow (2003), Briony Fer (2008), and Tom McDonough (2012).
This annual program is made possible by The Hilla von Rebay Foundation.
