While Copenhagen does not figure into traditional histories of modern art in Europe, it was a center of activity for members of Europe’s avant-garde in the 1890s. The formation of Den Frie Udstilling/The Free Exhibition (1891), national ambitions, and the presence of Mette Gad Gauguin, among other factors, placed Copenhagen in a privileged position among European art centers.

Exhibition co-curator Dr. Patricia G. Berman will explore the relationships among several artists represented in the Loeb Collection to, and within, these phenomena.

About Dr. Patricia G. Berman

Patricia G. Berman is an art historian specializing in the art and visual culture of the late 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. She is the Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art and Chair of the Art Department at Wellesley College and also teaches at the University of Oslo’s Institute of Philosophy, the History of Ideas, Art History, and Classical Studies, where she is a part of a research project entitled Edvard Munch, Modernity, and Meditation.

Her research interests include turn-of-the-(20th) century European art, especially in Scandinavia, and mid-century modern American painting and photography. Berman is particularly interested in national identity formation, issues of gender and sexuality, and in the problems of public space. Her books include studies of the artists Edvard Munch and James Ensor, and of Danish painting in the 19th century. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Anna and Samuel Pinanski Teaching Prize, Wellesley College (2008) and both a Fulbright Senior Scholar Grant and an American Philosophical Society Fellowship (2006). She is also a two-time Fellow of The American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF) (1984; 1985) and has been a member of the ASF Committee on Fellowships and Grants since 1992. Berman was named an Advisory Trustee to the ASF in March 2012.

Berman’s curatorial work includes MUNCH | WARHOL and the Multiple Image (2013, Scandinavia House/The American-Scandinavian Foundation); Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America, A Centennial Retrospective, 1912 (2011, Scandinavia House/The American-Scandinavian Foundation, NY); In Munch’s Laboratory: The Path to the Aula (2011, Munch Museum, Oslo), Edvard Munch and the Modern Life of the Soul (2006, Museum of Modern Art, NY); Cold War Modern: The Domesticated Avant-Garde, 1945 – 1960 (2000-01, Wellesley College); Edvard Munch and Women: Image and Myth (1997, San Diego Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, Oregon, Columbia, South Carolina, and the Yale University Art Gallery); and Modern Hieroglyphs: Gestural Drawing and the European Vanguard, 1900 – 1918 (1995, Wellesley and the Equitable Collection). Early in her career, she worked closely with Kirk Varnedoe on the landmark exhibition Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting, 1880 – 1910, which toured the U.S. in 1982-83.

Exhibition-related educational programs have been supported in part by a grant from the Robert Lehman Foundation.

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Photo by the American-Scandinavian Foundation

MON – 1-13-2014 – 6:30 PM
free