The Albany Museum of Art European Splendors Lecture Series will conclude on Thursday, Dec 9, 2021 with Dr. Joyce de Vries, chair of the Department of Art & Art History at Auburn University, speaking on Living with Art: Paintings from the European Splendors Exhibition in the Renaissance Household.

The lecture, which begins at 5:30 pm, is free and open to the public.

“This is the fifth lecture in the series that began in September,” Annie Vanoteghem, director of Education and Public Programming for the AMA, said. “Each lecturer has added special perspectives to the beautiful Renaissance and Baroque paintings in European Splendors: Old Master Paintings from the Kress Collection, making it even more enjoyable to view these beautiful artworks on loan to us from the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina.”

The exhibition, which continues through Dec 23, will be open immediately before and after the lecture 

“I hope everyone will come out to see—or to see again—these masterpieces,” AMA Executive Director Andrew J. Wulf, Ph.D., said. “It is rare to have so many masterpieces from these eras in a single exhibition, so this is a marvelous opportunity to physically see artwork that you otherwise would have to drive hundreds of miles to view. 

Vanoteghem said she has been pleased with the turnouts at the previous lectures, which have featured Keaton Wynn, professor of art history and ceramics at Georgia Southwestern State University;

Charles Williams; professor of visual art, art appreciation and art history at Albany State University;

Dr. Grace Harpster, assistant professor of art history at Georgia State University, and

Dr. Elissa Auerbach, professor of art history at Georgia College & State University.

As with those lectures, Dr. de Vries’ lecture will be broadcast live on the Albany Museum of Art’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/AlbanyMuseumOfArt). The lecture videos also are being uploaded to the AMA’s YouTube channel, and the videos are available for viewing on the museum’s website, www.albanymuseum.com.

In her lecture, Living with Art: Paintings from the European Splendors Exhibition in the Renaissance Household, de Vries said she will situate artworks from the exhibition in the domestic sphere, where a number of them likely were originally displayed.

She will discuss examples of domestic spaces of both elites and the middle classes in northern Italy during the Renaissance, as well as social issues in relation to the domestic realm, such as family relationships; rituals associated with birth, marriage, and death; issues of privacy; work/workshop spaces, and devotional practices

De Vries, who has been at Auburn since 2003, earned her Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance Art History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her specialty is the visual and material culture of early modern (1400-1700) Italy, and, in particular, material culture in the domestic sphere and the visual construction of gender.

Her book, Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances: Gender, Art, and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Ashgate, 2010), explores a ruling noblewoman's patronage and collecting practices and the ways she harnessed culture to stretch accepted gender roles. Her work on Sforza was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and a Millard Meiss Publication Grant from the College Art Association.

De Vries’s current research concentrates on Bologna, where she mines the state archive for inventories, account books, and other records of the images and objects that populated early modern domestic spaces. One project focuses on the collection strategies of Giovanni Fantuzzi, a nobleman with limited resources in early 18^th century Bologna, and the costs and valuations of his art over the century. De Vries found extremely rare and previously unknown detailed diagrams of the collector’s gallery in the family’s archives, and has constellated the drawings with dozens of other documents to recreate how the art was once displayed.

Other projects concern artisan and non-elite women, and examine dowry and mortuary inventories to consider their material goods. With her analysis of these records, de Vries seeks to shed light on not just the material goods in the domestic realm, but also the agency and endeavors of ordinary early modern women, a group largely underrepresented in art historical studies. De Vries grounds her research in archival evidence, and has worked in archives and libraries throughout Italy, including Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Forlì, Mantua, Milan, Modena, Naples, Rome, the Vatican, and Venice 

She served as director of the Women's Studies Program at Auburn University (2011-17) and taught and completed research in this discipline in addition to art history. She co-edited Outside In: Voices from the Margins (2018), a collection of essays that explore issues of diversity, inclusion, and the resilience of women, particularly women of color, in higher education. 

The European Splendors Lecture Series is funded with a $2,725 Education Program Grant that the Georgia Council for the Arts awarded the AMA in July 2021. 

European Splendors: Old Master Paintings from the Kress Collection is organized by the Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, with support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York. Its exhibition at the AMA was made possible by the Walter and Frances Bunzl Family Foundation.

 CURRENT AMA EXHIBITIONS

n  European Splendors: Old Master Paintings from the Kress Collection is in the Haley Gallery Aug 26-Dec 23, 2021.

n  Horse Power: Works by Cedric Smith is in the East Gallery July 10-Dec 23, 2021.

n  Essay Topic: Write Down the Word WOMAN One Hundred Times, New works by Sanaz Haghani is in the McCormack Gallery July 10-Dec 23, 2021

n  Escape Plan, installation by Elinor Saragoussi, is in the West Gallery.