Museum of Art

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an artist like no other. Working as an architect, printmaker, polemicist, archaeologist, interior designer, and art dealer, he created works that even today define our notions of Ancient and Modern Rome, and which helped establish a taste for Neoclassical design that spread across Europe. His powers of invention were prodigious, and his influence enormous—maddeningly so for some of his contemporaries.

Physical connoisseurship of works of art informs the analysis, authentication and conservation of art. Examples illustrating these topics will focus on the conservation of paper and the printmaking process of Giovanni Piranesi. Lecture by Theresa Fairbanks Harris, Senior Conservator, Works on Paper, Yale University Art Museums.

Pieter Broucke, Prof. of History of Art/Architecture, Assoc. Curator, Ancient Art will share his knowledge of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Artist, Architect, Archaeologist 1720-1778. Remarks will begin promptly at 5pm.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an artist like no other. Working as an architect, printmaker, polemicist, archaeologist, interior designer, and art dealer, he created works that even today define our notions of Ancient and Modern Rome, and which helped establish a taste for Neoclassical design that spread across Europe.

In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander month, the Student Friends of the Art Museum is inviting a local Middlebury artist Yinglei Zhang, to lead a free calligraphy class for Middlebury College students! 20 person limit; sign up at go/sfoamcalligraphy.

The photographs of Lebanese American artist, Rania Matar tells the stories of young women through portraits taken throughout Lebanon, France, Egypt and the United States.

Student lecture by Stephanie Quichimbo ’25, Robert F. Reiff Curatorial Intern.

Pre-colonial and post-colonial South American art differ greatly in medium, with a shift from stonework and textiles to paintings, reflecting changes in subject matter and ideology. Our Lady of Cocharcas exemplifies how cultural hybridity influenced colonial art, as indigenous communities may have adopted European figures to assert their identity while outwardly conforming to Spanish rule.

Student “town hall” engagement session with the architects for the new Middlebury Museum

The photographs of Lebanese Palestinian American artist, based in Boston, Rania Matar tell the stories of young women through portraits taken throughout Lebanon, France, Egypt, and the United States. Photographed through car windows, in abandoned buildings, snow-strewn fields, or floating in the Mediterranean Sea, the women collaborate with Matar, sharing a sense of creative agency. These large-scale color photographs portray individuality intimately tied to the histories and connections of place.

Theresa Fairbanks Harris, Senior Conservator of Works on Paper at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, and Josephine Rodgers, Curator of Collections and Director of Engagement at the Middlebury College Art Museum, will lead a discussion on the conservation treatment and history of Edwin Austin Abbey’s (1852–1911) drawings at Yale University. The treatment was completed in preparation for the ‘The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876–1917’ exhibition now on view at the Yale University Art Gallery.