Photo Exhibition At Custom House Features Works By Students From Washington College, Corcoran College Of Art And Design, And University Of Delaware

Chestertown, MD, March 4, 2003 — The Washington College Department of Art, Art History Club, and C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience present the first Student Invitational Art Exhibition, featuring photographic works by students at Washington College, the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and the University of Delaware.

Organized by Jennifer O'Neill, visiting assistant professor of art, this unique three-way art exhibit consists of color, black and white, and digital photography, as well as alternative processes such as Cyanotypes (a non-silver photographic printing process invented in 1842), and Van Dyke Browns (a process that utilizes the action of light on ferric salts to create prints on regular paper). Entries were juried by Donald McColl, Chair of the Department of Art at Washington College; Muriel Hasbun, Program Coordinator of Fine Art Photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design; and Priscilla A. Smith, Program Chair of Photography at the University of Delaware.

The free exhibition will be open from Monday through Thursday, March 10 to March 27, 1-4 p.m., at The Custom House, 101 S. Water Street, Chestertown. For information call (410) 810-7156, or visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu online.

Art Historian To Discuss Climate Change And Winter Landscapes In Flemish And Dutch Paintings

Chestertown, MD, January 29, 2003 — The Washington College Department of Art, the Center for the Environment and Society and Art History Club present “Bethlehem in the Snow and Holland on the Ice: Climatic Change and the Invention of the Winter Landscape, 1560-1620,” a lecture by Lawrence O. Goedde, Ph.D., Chair of the McIntire Department of Art at the University of Virginia, Tuesday, February 11, at 8 p.m. in the College's Casey Academic Center Forum. The event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Goedde has taught art history at the University of Virginia since 1981. A graduate of Washington University, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and specializes in Northern Baroque art. In addition to numerous academic awards and research grants, Dr. Goedde is past vice-president of the Historians of Netherlandish Art. His talk will address both the hypothesis that painted landscapes produced in specific areas depict or imply weather conditions corresponding to the observed weather of those regions and the proposition that changes in climate are reflected in the development of art, or even that climate changes cause artistic change.

His lecture will focus on a group of snow scenes dating to 1565-1567 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. In these works, the celebrated Flemish artist painted perhaps for the first time in Western art snowy winter weather in a large-scale format and established an artistic subject that remains popular to this day. In recent years a number of scholars of climate history have linked Bruegel's invention to the bitterly cold winter of 1564-65 and to the Little Ice Age of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. But the direct relation of works of art to climate and to changes in climate can be problematic, Dr. Goedde believes, and though Netherlandish art can be highly descriptive, there is a selective realism in Dutch landscape painting that complicates the hypothesis that climate changes necessarily influenced the artists.

April 11th Lecture To Examine The Art Of Hieronymus Bosch As A Mirror Of Human Nature

Chestertown, MD, March 27, 2002 — The Washington College Department of Art, the Friends of the Arts and the Washington College Art History Club present "A TASTE OF BOSCH: THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS," a lecture by Reindert Falkenberg, Ph.D., Henry Luce III Professor of Western Art History and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA. The talk will be held Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 7:30 p.m. in the College's Casey Academic Center Forum.

Dr. Falkenberg received his Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Amsterdam, and has taught at such universities as Harvard, Princeton and the University of California-Berkeley, in addition to the Graduate Theological Union. His research focuses on Late Medieval and Early Modern Art, and he has taught courses on Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch and Late Medieval religious and devotional imagery.

His lecture will examine Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" as a mirror of the human soul, used to focus self-reflection on the fallen condition and chaotic state of human nature. "The mirror, in late medieval culture," writes Falkenberg, "has a whole variety of meanings and connotations. First of all, and most directly, it relates to the viewer's self-image, how a human being looks, or how he or she is—which is not the same. Moreover, it shows how a human being should not be, or shall be, as in writings such as the "Spiegel der sonden" (the Mirror of sins), or the "Spiegel der salicheit" (the Mirror of salvation). The mirror, therefore, may relate to the visible as much as to the invisible."

What Makes American Architecture Unique? Talk March 20

Chestertown, MD, March 14, 2002 — The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Department of Art, and the Art History Club at Washington College are proud to host Robert Duemling—Senior Fellow and Lecturer in the College's Department of Art, and former Director of the National Building Museum, Washington, DC—speaking on "Making Architecture American: Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright," Wednesday, March 20, 2002, at 7:30 p.m. in the College's Casey Academic Center Forum. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Did any architects, particularly early in our nation's history, consciously set out to create "American" architecture? Have any done so since? And is there anything particularly "American" about what has been built in this country? Duemling will address these questions.

Duemling is a former career diplomat and museum director, now retired, devoting his time and energies to a variety of philanthropic projects. Duemling spent his youth in Ft. Wayne, IN, and San Diego, CA. He attended Yale University, earning a B.A. degree with honors in 1950, and an M.A. in 1953. In 1950, he was awarded a Henry Fellowship to study at Cambridge University, England, and from 1953 to 1957, Duemling served as an air intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy, with the Pacific fleet and in Japan, attaining the rank of lieutenant (senior grade).

In 1957, Duemling entered the Foreign Service, commencing a 30-year career, specializing in political affairs and the East Asian region, with assignments in Kuala Lumpur, Kuching (Borneo), Osaka and Tokyo. He also served as executive assistant to the head of the East Asian Bureau of the State Department, and subsequently served in a similar capacity with the Deputy Secretary of State. Other postings abroad included Rome, Ottawa (deputy chief of mission, 1976-80), and as Ambassador to Suriname (1982-84).

During service in Washington, he was principal negotiator for assembling the foreign military components of the Sinai peacekeeping force (1981-82), and director of the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Organization (1985-87).

Duemling retired from the Foreign Service in 1987 to accept the position of President and Director of the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, a post he held for six and one-half years. His current philanthropic commitments include the National Gallery of Art (Vice Chairman, Trustees' Council), National Cathedral (Building and Grounds Committee), National Tennis Foundation (Trustee), Cafritz Foundation (Advisory Committee), Winterthur Museum and Gardens (Academic Affairs Committee), and the Washington National Monument Association. His former associations include the boards of Washington College and the American Friends of Canada.

Duemling is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, and a member of the Metropolitan and Alibi Clubs of Washington, and the Century Association of New York. He is married to the former Louisa duPont Copeland, and they reside in Washington, DC, and Worton, MD.