Patricia Fortini Brown, former chair of Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology, will deliver the inaugural Edward J. Olszewski Lecture in Italian Art, sponsored by Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Art History and Art. The event will be held Wednesday, Oct. 8, at 5:30 p.m. in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Recital Hall. A reception will follow.
Brown’s free, public talk, “Between Observation and Appropriation: Venetian Encounters with a Fragmentary Classical Past,” draws from her research, primarily on Venice and its empire from the Middle Ages to modern times. She focuses on how art and architecture reflect the cultural times in which they were created.
The new art history lecture honors Olszewski, who served a term as the department’s chair, and recognizes his passion for teaching and studying Italian Renaissance art throughout his career. He came to Case Western Reserve in 1971 and retired in December 2010.
Like Olszewski, Brown retired in 2010 from Princeton. She has published numerous books about Venetian art, with her most recent, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (2006). Museo Italo Americano in San Francisco named her its 1992 Woman of the Year. Among her numerous honors, she received the Serena Medal in Italian Studies from the British Academy in 2011.
For information, contact Deborah Tenenbaum in the art history department at 216.368.4118.