W&L's Lepage Chosen for European Art Seminar
Andrea Lepage, assistant professor of art history at Washington and Lee University, is one of 21 faculty members from around the country chosen to participate in a special week-long seminar on Teaching European Art in context.
The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) selected Lepage for the seminar, which will be held at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in June. The seminar will be 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.
“The exhibition ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis,’ to be installed at the High Museum offers a rare occasion to view in person some of the finest Dutch paintings created during the Early Modern era,” said Lepage. “Participation in the associated seminar, ‘Dutch Art, Patrons, and Markets,’ provides me with an invaluable opportunity to expand upon Washington and Lee’s art history curriculum and create interdisciplinary connections between the art history and chemistry departments.
“My colleague in the chemistry department, Erich Uffelman, currently teaches a two-part course dealing with science in art. The first part of the course takes place on-campus and equips students with knowledge of the physical, chemical, and biological concepts necessary to undertake technical examinations of 17th-century Dutch paintings. The second part takes place on-site in Amsterdam and provides students with the ability to put their scientific training into practice while visiting museums and conservation workshops. Beginning next winter, an art history class focused on 17th-century Dutch art will be taught in connection with Professor Uffelman’s chemistry course and will provide students with a greater cultural context for their technical examination.”
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, which aims to strengthen the teaching of art history to undergraduates at smaller colleges and universities.
“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.
Lepage joined the Washington and Lee faculty in 2008. She received her B.A. in art history from Clark University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Brown University. She teaches courses in Colonial Latin American art, Modern Latin American art, Spanish Baroque art and Italian Baroque art.
She also teaches in W&L’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies program and is currently offering a spring term course, Chicano Art and Muralism, which is based in part on the current exhibition of Chicano art from the collection of entertainer Cheech Marin.
The CIC is an association of 645 nonprofit independent colleges and universities and more than 90 higher education organizations. Since 1956 the organization has worked to support college and university leadership, advance institutional excellence, and enhance public understanding of private higher education’s contributions to society.
