Art and Globalism in Eighteenth-Century Europe

The OLLI Distinguished Speakers Series presents:

Sarah R. Cohen

Art and Globalism in Eighteenth Century Europe

Saturday, September 30
at 3:00pm EDT

In-person Only at the Berkshire Museum
39 South Street, Pittsfield, MA

Online registration is closed. Cash and checks accepted at the door.

This event will not be recorded.

This lecture will explore art produced in Europe during the eighteenth century, a time traditionally known as the “Enlightenment,” but now studied for many other issues of social significance, including unprecedented global travel and commercial exchange. We will consider the visual and material aspects of various artistic media in a range of European countries, as well as art obtained from other parts of the world, and we will query how this art both represented and actively contributed to Europeans’ understandings of their own societies, as well as their perceptions and misperceptions of Asian, Turkish, Native American and African cultures.  Special attention will focus upon the ways art helped to shape Europeans’ gender politics and definitions of race both within Europe and in the slave-holding colonies of the Caribbean islands.

Sarah R. Cohen, Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History, University at Albany, SUNY, received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from Yale University. Her research has focused extensively upon representations of the body in European art from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Her first book, Art, Dance and the Body in French Culture of the Ancien  Régime, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2000, and she has published a number of articles on gesture and performance in early modern art. Her next two books addressed artistic representations of animals: Enlightened Animals in Eighteenth-century Art: Sensation, Matter and Knowledge (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Picturing Animals in Early Modern Art: Art and Soul (Brepols/Harvey Miller, 2022).  Sarah Cohen’s current work explores the global implications of art made for the French dining table in the eighteenth century.

Admission is $10 for OLLI at BCC and Berkshire Museum members, and $15 for the general public.

Admission is free for  students, staff and faculty from Berkshire Community College, MCLA, Simon's Rock, and Williams; youth 17 and under, and those holding WIC, EBT/SNAP, or ConnectorCare cards.