The Art History Department will host “Everyday Life of Memorials” as the third lecture in its Memory and the History of Art Lecture Series. Presenter Dr. Andrew Shanken, associate professor of Architecture at University of California, Berkeley, will begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, in Room 126, John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts.
Memorials tend to be programmed and choreographed, serving as stages or props for commemorations on special days of remembrance. In these moments they are "turned on," part of a hierophany of memory. But they spend the rest of their time in secular repose. This talk explores what happens when memorials are not "turned on," when they take their rest as civic ornament. It is thus about memorials and urbanism, following the everyday life of memorials as these highly charged objects or spaces join the quotidian flow of the city. The talk sketches out a larger theoretical project, as well, mapping recent interest in non-representational geography against a range of both permanent and spontaneous memorials.
Dr. Carolyn Dean will present the final lecture at 7 p.m. Friday, April 27, at the Weisman Art Museum. Dean's talk, "Masonry, Memory and Meaning in Inka Rockwork," is being co-sponsored by the Weisman and the UST Department of Art History.
For more information call (651) 962-5560.
