Lectures will span traditional to avant garde painting

By Sarah Garrison

Do you ever wish that you had taken a history of art course or had the opportunity to learn about contemporary art? Now is your chance.

Starting this month, the Library will offer a series of four art lectures showing the diversity of western art. These will be given by specialists in their fields, three of them members of the Norfolk community.

Galleries at the New Britain Museum of American Art.

On September 25 at 7 p.m., using the library’s big screen, Debby Tait will guide us through the recently completed new building, housing the New Britain Museum of American Art. In October she will offer an actual tour of the museum. According to Tait, who has been a docent and lecturer at the New Britain Museum for many years, the building  “is designed to educate, entertain and involve the visitor in the experience of art.”  She will demonstrate how the design meets these goals.

The collection in New Britain ranges from colonial portraits to contemporary art, with 19^th century paintings and sculptures in appropriate room settings. Tait will focus on art of the 20^th century, much of which has not been displayed until now. A special exhibit of contemporary Chinese American Artists, which reveals a fusion of western ideas with Chinese art,  will also be available for viewing.

In November, the highly influential American painter, Carroll Dunham, of New York, will speak about contemporary art. As an artist who has maintained an independent style, he is considered to have expanded the vocabulary of American painting by combining biomorphism, cartooning and abstraction.

Moving into the town’s big anniversary year, February’s presenter will be Ann Havemeyer, curator of the Norfolk Historical Museum, who will inform us about artist Mary Cassatt and her friendship with art collector Louisine Waldron Havemeyer.

Finally in April, Susan Galassi, a curator at the Frick Collection in New York and founder of its education department, will give us an overview of the Frick’s collection of European art. A tour of the museum under Galassi’s guidance is a definite possibility. So mark your calendars for the lectures and road trips.

Photo courtesy of the New Britain Museum of American Art.