LECTURE SERIES: ART CONVERSATIONS VII

The Myth of Florence: Civic Pride, Competition and Symbolism

 in Early Renaissance Architecture

The builders of Renaissance Florence saw as their duty not only to modernize the city and create lasting monuments to the spirit of humanism, but also to honor the republic which fashioned herself as the “new Rome.” An appetite for rediscovering the wisdom of antiquity and a fierce sense of competition guided the unprecedented building campaigns of the 14^th and 15^th centuries, ushering in one of the most important artistic transformations in European art, the Renaissance. This lecture will look at Florentine buildings as indicators of civic pride, vehicles for new knowledge, and symbols of the beliefs of the Republic.

Ena Heller is the Bruce A. Beal director of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum. Before coming to Rollins in the fall of 2012 she was the founding Executive Director of the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA) in New York City, and held positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Her teaching experience includes appointments at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA) and Manhattanville College (Purchase, NY).  Her publications include the edited volumes Perspectives on Medieval Art: Learning through Looking (2009) and Reluctant Partners: Art and Religion in Dialogue (2004) and the exhibition catalogs Icons or Portraits? Images of Jesus and Mary from the Collection of Michael Hall (2001) and Tobi Kahn: Sacred Spaces of the 21st Century (2009). She contributed essays to the collective volumes From the Margins I & II: Women of the Hebrew Bible and their Afterlives/Women of the New Testament and their Afterlives (both in 2009); Women’s Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church (2005); and the Cambridge History of Religious Architecture of the World (forthcoming 2017). Dr. Heller holds a Ph.D. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and is a graduate of the Getty Museum Leadership Institute.  She has presented papers at the conferences of the Society of Architectural Historians, College Art Association, and the Council of American Jewish Museums, at the Institute of Fine Arts, and at numerous museums and universities throughout the country, and is the recipient of the 2010 Religion and Arts Award from the American Academy of Religion.

RECEPTION TO FOLLOW AT A PRIVATE HOME.

PLEASE RSVP TO LISA MARIE BROWNE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT 561-289-4090