Scholar to lecture on contemporary Irish art, politics, culture
Irish studies scholar Sheila Dickinson will give a free lecture, "Art, Politics and Culture: Ireland at the Turn of the Millennium," at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 17, in Room 126 (auditorium), John R. Roach Center for the Liberal Arts.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Dickinson, who is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at University College Dublin, is a 1991 graduate of St. Olaf College. She has an M.Phil. in Irish studies from National University of Ireland, Galway, and received a Keough Fellowship from the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She has served as an adjunct professor at Ireland's National College of Art and Design and University College Dublin, Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and National University of Ireland in Galway. She also is a frequent contributor to CIRCA Art Magazine in Dublin and other publications.
Dickinson describes contemporary Irish art as engaging social and political issues with "postmodern panache, dealing with issues that modernist formal art ignored for much of the 20th century. Not since the Celtic Revival has the contestation and conversation on Irish identity emerged so fervently in Irish art." Dickinson cites Irish artists' engagement with indigenous Irish culture, including its traditional crafts, oral tradition and connection to the land.
The lecture is jointly sponsored by St. Thomas' Art History Department and the UST Center for Irish Studies.
For more information, call the Art History Department, (651) 962-5560.
