- Thursday, April 23, 2026 | 4:30 p.m. | Boger 112
Photos, top to bottom: Tumbling Walls (Photography: Lena Yaremenko), Lumber Lane Barns (Photography: Carl Bellavia), and Lescaze Restoration (Photography: Arkadiusz Piegdon).
"The Delight of Practice"
- Wednesday, April 29, 2026 | 4:30 p.m. | Boger 112
Arkadiusz Piegdon '08, Architect, Lynne Breslin Architects
A talk from a Wesleyan graduate architect that explores the joys and challenges of small-scale architectural practice. This talk presents progress shots, construction drawings, models, and renderings to illustrate the reality of the building process.
- Lescaze Restoration: Ongoing restoration of a William Lescaze home in Tuxedo Park.
- Lumber Lane Barns: A complex reconstruction and reconfiguration of three historic barns into a single-family residence.
- Tumbling Walls: New residential construction utilizing a structural steel frame.
This lecture is sponsored by the Samuel Silipo ’85 Distinguished Visitors Fund of the Department of Art and Art History.
"Art within Reach"
- Monday, May 4, 2026 | 4:30 p.m. | Boger 112
In his newest book, Pitchers of American Life: Art within Reach, Ezra Shales discusses vessels for drinks in ancient cultures and in modern family relationships. Each chapter interprets a single object as a revealing time capsule. His vision of design/craft/art intersecting provides a deliberately provocative strategy to move beyond inherited limitations and prejudices by exploring tactile pleasures and tacit knowledge, as well as the agency of artifacts.
Might a history of art extracted from the common cupboard liberate us from the usual hierarchies of civilization and the expenses of the Grand Tour—and make the idea of art more accessible and relevant? This consideration of collective tools, relics that still resonate with our yearnings for sociability and communion, is a compassionate investigation of the immense backlog of discarded mass-produced goods piling ever higher.
The presentation will include 'show-and-touch' participation so that, for instance, a design on display at the London Crystal Palace in 1851 can be engaged firsthand and weighed in relation to one from our Plasticene era.
A Wesleyan alumnus, Ezra Shales double-majored in Classics and The College of Letters. Professor Joseph Siry supervised his thesis, which benefited from a fellowship at the Center for the Humanities.
This lecture is sponsored by the Samuel Silipo ’85 Distinguished Visitors Fund, Department of Art and Art History and the Department of American Studies.
Past Events
"Latent Value: Spratling Silver and the Aesthetics of Mineral Development"
- Monday April 6, 2026
Grace Kuipers '14, Postdoctoral fellow, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University
- Thursday February 12, 2026
Hunter Shen '18, Harvard JD/MUP; Associate, Latham & Watkins
Building the Future: Towards a Climate Ready Architecture
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Monday December 8, 2025
Richard C. Yancey '85, Founding CEO, Building Energy Exchange
Shifting Shelves — Libraries of the 19th-Century Islamic World
- Friday October 24, 2025
Yael Rice, Associate Professor of Art and the History of Art and of Asian Languages and Civilizations, Amherst College - "Scattered Leaves: The Fates of South Asian Albums (Muraqqa’s) and their Libraries, 18th-19th c."
Deniz Türker, Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture, Rutgers-New Brunswick - "Tanzimat’s Antiquarians, Their Coins, and Books"
Selin Ünlüönen, Luther Gregg Sullivan Fellow in Art History, Wesleyan University - "The Treasury, the Museum, the Library: How to Keep Books in Qajar Iran"
Extracting the Past: How the 'AI' Industry Exploits Art History and What We Can Do to Stop It
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Tuesday September 16, 2025
Sonja Drimmer, Associate Professor, History of Art & Architecture, University of Massachusetts Amherst