Past Events:
Senior Talks in Art History
Thursday April 24, 4:30 p.m., Boger Hall, Room 112
Art History majors Sophie Raiskin-Wood '25, Chloe Schaeffer '25, Emily Petersdorf '25, and Valerie Gottridge '25.
Thrown Upon the World and No Place to Stay: Reconsidering the Neue Sachlichkeit
Monday February 17, 4:30 p.m., Boger 112
Sabine Kriebel, Senior Lecturer, History of Art, University College Cork, Ireland
The year 2025 marks the centenary of the “Die Neue Sachlichkeit” exhibition curated by Gustav Hartlaub, which gave the signature aesthetic movement of Weimar Germany its name. Variously translated as “The New Objectivity” or “The New Sobriety,” it swiftly became a buzzword of mid- to late- Weimar cultural production, from painterly mimesis to architectural austerity. Cold, detached, alienated, capitalist, cynical, retrograde, protofascist. These are among the descriptors associated with this broadly realist tendency in German painting that characterized the “stable” Weimar Republic of the mid-1920s. This lecture revisits the New Objectivity, or “Magical Realism,” as co-curator Franz Roh called it, to offer new directions of interpretation, using the work of Christian Schad, Otto Dix, Aenne Biermann, Florence Henri, among others, to revive our understandings of this often maligned avant-garde.
Sabine Kriebel has published extensively on the art and visual culture of the Weimar Republic, including Dada, Bauhaus, and photography. Her monograph Revolutionary Beauty: The Radical Photomontages of John Heartfield, 1929-1938 appeared with the University of California Press in 2014. Her current book project, Objectivity, Viewed Obliquely: The Neue Sachlichkeit Reframed, rethinks this moment of dubious modernism through the lens of psychoanalysis and phenomenology.
Truth and Image: Portraits in China 1000–1900
Tuesday February 11, 4:30 p.m., Boger 112
Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang Curator of Chinese Painting, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Portraiture has long been treated as a minor branch of Chinese art history, understood for its functional role in ancestor veneration but rarely considered along stylistic or intellectual lines. This talk will offer pathways toward reimagining the study of portraiture in premodern China, arguing that portraits were deeply integrated into the lives of elite intellectuals and that they stimulated and mediated a rich discourse on questions of selfhood, identity, and representation.
Urban Studies in Action: Transforming Cities Through Partnership
Thursday February 6, 4:30 p.m., Boger 112
Douglas Land '12, Senior Manager, JetBlue Airways Corporation
Join Douglas Smith Land, Wesleyan Class of 2012, for a discussion on bringing urban studies to life in the real world. Offering lessons on bridging the gap between a liberal arts education and a career in urban development, Douglas Land will explore navigating complex stakeholder landscapes, balancing public and private interests, and delivering projects that enhance quality of life for diverse populations. Drawing on his career in urban planning, public-sector strategy, and real estate development, he will share insights from transformative projects across New York City, including the redevelopment of JFK Airport, the Bronx's first Hip Hop Museum, and affordable housing initiatives in Brooklyn. Attendees will gain perspective on translating urban studies into impactful practice.