Harn Eminent Scholar Lecture Series to feature Margaret Werth, Nov. 20

December 3, 2008

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—Margaret Werth, author and University of Delaware associate professor of art history, will give a lecture at 6 p.m. on Nov. 20 at the Harn Museum of Art during Museum Nights.

Titled “Modernity and the Face,” the lecture will feature discussion of her current project, a book studying representations of the human face in painting, printmaking, photography and film between 1880 and 1930. The book investigates how such images elaborate changing ideas about subjectivity, identity, affect, gender, sexuality, technology and visuality.

Published in 2002, Werth’s book, “The Joy of Life: The Idyllic in French Art, circa 1900,” explores dreamlike representations of mythic community, individual fantasy and utopianism in French painting from 1890 to 1917. The author discusses artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Signac, Puvis de Chavannes, Paul Cézanne and Henri-Edmond Cross in relation to contemporary political, literary, psychological and philosophical discourses.

Werth received her bachelor’s degree from Boston University and her master’s degree and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She taught at Barnard College and Columbia University, before becoming an associate professor at the University of Delaware in 2001. Her primary area of interest is art and visual culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Werth has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Georges Pompidou Art and Culture Foundation.

This lecture was organized by the University of Florida School of Art and Art History through the Harn Eminent Scholar Endowment and co-sponsored by the Harn Museum of Art. Additional support is provided by University of Florida Student Government, making it possible for the Harn Museum of Art to stay open this Thursday evening from 5 to 9 p.m.

Admission to the Harn Museum of Art is free. For more information call 352-392-9826 or visit www.harn.ufl.edu.