University of Virginia scholar to deliver Rand art lectures

CHAPEL HILL -- Four lectures exploring the theme "Painting and Optics from Antiquity to Leonardo da Vinci" will be presented Oct. 5-9 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. David Summers, a William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia, will give the free, public lectures in the Hanes Art Center Auditorium, scheduled as follows:

• "Scene Painting and Shadow Painting: The Beginnings of Optics and Classical Art,’ " 3 p.m. Oct. 5. A reception will follow, from 5-7:30 p.m.
• "Speculum Animatum: Brunelleschi’s First Perspective Demonstration," 6 p.m. Oct. 6.
• "Speculum Mundi: Jan Van Eyck’s Lost Map of the World," 6 p.m. Oct. 8.
• "Narcissus and the Mirror without Stain," 6 p.m. Oct. 9.

During the Oct. 5 reception, art by UNC art professor Beth Grabowski will be on display.

The talks will be this year’s Bettie Allison Rand Lectures in Art History sponsored by the art department. The lectures emphasize European painting of the 14^th through 18^th centuries. William G. Rand of Raleigh established the lecture series in honor of his late wife, who studied art at UNC. She was a founding member of the Raleigh Fine Arts Society and a life member of the N.C. Art Society.

"David Summers is one of the most important and innovative art historians practicing today, and we are very fortunate to have him speak at UNC," said Dr. Mary Sheriff, a UNC art professor and department chair. "He has chosen a broadly significant topic for this lecture series that will interest faculty, students and the larger public."

The lectures will be transcribed for a book to be published by UNC Press.

Summers wrote "Michelangelo and the Language of Art" (Princeton University Press, 1981), "The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics" (Cambridge University Press, 1987) and "Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism" (Phaidon Press Inc., July 2003).

"This lecture series will develop and elaborate on ideas central to this new book," said Sheriff.  "In addition to his many accomplishments as a writer and scholar, David Summers is also a practicing artist."

A professor at Virginia since 1981, Summers taught previously at the University of Pittsburgh, and at Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr colleges. He has written and lectured on topics ranging from the work of Michelangelo to modernism. He has been on the editorial boards of the Art Bulletin, which publishes scholarly research on the history of art and architecture, and the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Limited paid parking for the lectures will be in the Swain parking lot beside the Hanes Art Center, accessed from Cameron Avenue. For more information, call the art department at 962-2015.

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Contacts: UNC Department of Art, 962-2015, Dr. Mary Pardo, UNC associate professor of art, 962-0734