Saturday, May 4, 10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.
Saturdays, March 2–May 4, 10:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. (no class March 23 or 30)
Saturday Seminar is a great way to start the weekend at the Museum. This eight-week program includes gallery studies and slide lectures. We are pleased to offer Members at the Sustaining ($550) level and above the opportunity to register for this special program.
This course will explore the themes of leisure and entertainment in art between the years 1865 and 1885, when Impressionism was at its height. Not since the Renaissance have we seen an art movement so thoroughly integrated into the social and cultural life of its time. Cafés, opera houses, dance halls, theaters, racetracks, and vacations became the central subjects of the "new art." The work of such artists as Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley will provide us with profound insights into the time in which these men lived. Above all, we will witness Paris's transformation under the direction of Baron Haussman from a medieval city composed of labyrinthine streets into the modern "City of Light," and we will explore both the city's high society and its dark underbelly. This course will include at least one visit to the Metropolitan's major spring exhibition Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity.
Lecturer: Elinor Richter, PhD
Elinor Richter earned her PhD, MPhil, and MA from Columbia University. She has taught full-time at Hunter College since 2001 and is also currently on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In 1997, she was the first adjunct professor to receive the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching at Hunter College. As a professor of Renaissance art, she has focused primarily on Italian art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Her concentration has been Italian sculpture, not only in Florence, the epicenter of the new Humanism, but also at other Tuscan centers such as Siena and Orvieto. Her articles have appeared in artibus et historiae, Source, and the Grove Dictionary of Art. She has written a book entitled La Scultura di Antonio Federighi (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2002) and is currently preparing a monographic study on the fortuna critica of Raphael's Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione. She has been a frequent lecturer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for many years.
[For Supporting and Sustaining Members]
Fee: $700 for the eight-session seminar
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Membership Classes for Adults
