M. Victor Leventritt Symposium

Modern Art in Germany circa 1903?

Saturday, February 7, 2004

Christian Room, Fogg Art Museum, 3rd floor
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge

Free admission, no advance registration required.
For further information, please call (617) 495-4544

In this morning of lectures and discussion held to complement the
Busch-Reisinger Museum's centennial exhibition Before Expressionism: Art in
Germany circa 1903 (on view through February 15, 2004; for exhibition
description, please visit www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/exhibitions), three noted
scholars - Patricia G. Berman, Pamela Kort, and Beth Irwin Lewis - will present
fresh perspectives on the problem of modern art in Germany around the turn of
the 20th century. What were the distinguishing formal innovations and thematic
pre-occupations in the art of this decisive moment in the long-term development
of Germany's cultural modernity? What role did critics, exhibiting societies,
and journals play in defining modern art? What creative tensions,
contradictions, and impulses has conventional scholarship hitherto overlooked?

Schedule:

9:30 - 9:45 Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum
Welcome and Introduction

9:45 - 10:30 Beth Irwin Lewis, Affiliated Scholar, The College of Wooster
"The Contentious World of German Modernism before 1903"

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee/Mid-morning break

11:00 - 11:45 Patricia G. Berman, Professor of Art, Wellesley College
"Private Practices and Public Fictions: Artist and Audience in 1903"

11:45 - 12:30 Pamela Kort, Independent Scholar and Curator, New York
"GrotesqueAnother Modernism: 1873-1905."

12:30 - 1:00 Questions/Discussion

The M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Fund was established through the generosity of
the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class
of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the
history and theory of art to the Harvard and Greater Boston communities.