2023 Terra Lectures in American Art. "Made in Japan: American Identity and the Arts of the East"

Lectures to be delivered by Professor Christopher Reed, Terra Visiting Professor of American Art.

Following on the first lecture in this series, which analyzed the acquisition and display of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts in turn-of-the-century Boston, this second lecture looks at the founding of the Freer Art Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Opened in 1923, the Freer juxtaposed Asian art with paintings by American artists, most prominently James Abbot McNeill Whistler, including his famous “Peacock Room.” Visitors to the Freer were encouraged to compare the colors, forms, and textures of Asian art with recent American painting, shifting ideas of art from depiction to abstraction while transforming the dynamics of cross-cultural interaction from impersonation to emulation. The legacy of this collaboration between Freer and Whistler – both alienated and peripatetic – proposed a model of American modernism at once productive and troubling.

Lectures open to all.  No booking required. 

Room change: This lecture will now take place at the Linbury Building, Worcester College