April 01, 2008
Art scholar to present lecture on April 3
CARBONDALE, Ill. — The School of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University Carbondale welcomes visiting artist Paul Greenhalgh to campus on Thursday, April 3.
Greenhalgh offers his views on issues pertaining to art and craft in contemporary practice. His lecture begins at 4 p.m. in the University Museum Auditorium. There is no charge to attend the lecture.
Greenhalgh is the director and president of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Corcoran College of Art and Design. The school and gallery are in Washington, D.C. Corcoran is the oldest private art museum and art college in the capital city.
Greenhalgh, a native of England, has a long and distinguished career as an art scholar and educator. He is a former Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the world's largest museum of fine, decorative art and design. Greenhalgh also served as tutor at the Royal College of Art, held a lectureship at the Cardiff Institute, and was Head of Art History at London's Camerwell College of Arts.
He is the author of seven books, including volumes on the Art Nouveau movement and, more recently, "The Modern Ideal: The Rise and Collapse of Idealism in the Visual Arts, from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism," published in 2005.
Greenhalgh curated a traveling Art Nouveau exhibit that was viewed by more than one million visitors. Greenhalgh argued that the Art Nouveau style, current from about 1890 to 1914, deserved a second look as a style that was more than merely decorative. The movement, Greenhalgh said in an interview when the exhibit was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. "held the beginnings of modernity proper."
Greenhalgh brings his insight to this campus as part of the School of Art and Design Visiting Artist Program, funded by the student-paid Fine Arts Activity Fee.