BRISTOL, Va. – Virginia Intermont College announces that art professor Perry Johnson is one of a select group of faculty members nationwide chosen by the Council of Independent Colleges to participate in a special week-long seminar on Teaching European Art in Context. The seminar is held in conjunction with an exhibition of rare traveling masterpieces of Dutch art featuring works by Vermeer, Hals, and Rembrandt. The exhibition, Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis, will be on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, beginning in June 2013.
CIC selected 21 faculty members to participate in the seminar, "Dutch Art, Patrons, and Markets," takes place at the High Museum. The seminar aims to strengthen the teaching of art history to undergraduates at smaller colleges and universities. Catherine Scallen, chair of the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she has taught since 1995, will lead the program.
Dutch art of the 17th century has long been popular for the visual pleasures of its naturalistic scenes, but it also represents a landmark in the development of the modern art world. During the 17th century, the practices of making and buying art boomed as never before. With the creation of the first large-scale open art market, prosperous Dutch merchants, artisans, and civil servants bought paintings and prints in unprecedented numbers. Foreign visitors were astonished that even modest members of Dutch society, such as farmers and bakers, owned multiple works of art. Dutch 17th-century art saw the rise of new subjects as well, where landscapes, still lifes, and scenes of daily life replaced formerly dominant religious images and scenes from classical mythology. Portraiture, too, flourished in this prosperous atmosphere.
"The seminar will be especially valuable for faculty members at institutions without large campus museums or proximity to major art museums. Art historians in all fields and studio artists, as well as faculty members who specialize in history, European studies, and related fields will find this seminar of interest," said CIC President Richard Ekman. "We believe that Perry Johnson will play a strong role in the seminar."
For more information, visit the CIC website at www.cic.edu/ArtHistory.
