Release Date: October 5, 2017

National Gallery of Art's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) to Host the Wyeth Lecture in American Art, October 25, 2017, at 4:30PM

Cécile Whiting, Chancellor's Professor in the department of art history and graduate program in visual studies at the University of California, Irvine.

Washington, DC—The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art has announced that Cécile Whiting, Chancellor's Professor in the department of art history and graduate program in visual studies at the University of California, Irvine, will present the 2017 Wyeth Lecture in American Art.  Titled "The Panorama and the Globe: Expanding the American Landscape in World War II," the lecture will take place October 25, 2017, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. in the West Building Lecture Hall at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The lecture is supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Lectures are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-seated basis.

Cécile Whiting's research focuses on how American artists in the 1940s recast the terms of landscape painting as it had been practiced in the 1930s. During World War II, maps that pictured troops advancing and retreating across national borders, along with photographs and newsreels documenting death and destruction in locations around the world (including the naval base of Pearl Harbor, the tropical rain forests of Guadalcanal, and the beaches of North Africa), prompted a change in painted representations of landscape in the United States. Whiting will analyze the ways in which artists broadened their scope from the local to the international. In particular, her lecture will examine paintings by Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry, who adopted a panoramic mode, literally and metaphorically widening the horizontal scope of their paintings to encompass both the United States and Europe. As a counterpoint, she will discuss The Rock, 1944–1948, the painting in which Peter Blume attempted to fit the globe into his landscape.

About Cécile Whiting
Cécile Whiting is Chancellor's Professor in the department of art history and graduate program in visual studies at the University of California, Irvine, where she has taught since 2003. She received a PhD and an MA from Stanford University and a BA from Swarthmore College. Previously she has held faculty appointments at UCLA (1988–2003) and Duke University (1987–1988). Currently a member of a Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar titled "Documenting War" (2016–2017), she has also held a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ben Gurion University (2009), a fellowship at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (2002–2003), and a University of California President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities (1994–1995).

Whiting's publications include Pop L.A.: Art and the City in the 1960s (2006; paperback 2008), for which she received the Charles Eldredge Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in American Art (2009); A Taste for Pop: Pop Art, Gender, and Consumer Culture (1997); and Antifascism in American Art (1989). In addition, she has published numerous articles, including "Philip Johnson: The Whence and the Whither of Art in Architecture," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2016); "California War Babies: Picturing World War Two in the 1960s," Art Journal (2010); "A New England Lament: Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand in the 1940s," Art Bulletin (2007); "Trompe l'oeil Painting and the Counterfeit Civil War," Art Bulletin (1997); "Borrowed Spots: The Gendering of Comic Books, Lichtenstein's Paintings, and Dishwasher Detergent," American Art (1992); and "Andy Warhol, the Public Star and the Private Self," Oxford Art Journal (1987).

About CASVA
Since its inception in 1979 the Center has promoted the study of the history, theory, and criticism of art, artifacts, architecture, urbanism, photography, and film through the formation of a community of scholars. A variety of private sources supports the program of fellowships, and appointments are approved by the Gallery's Board of Trustees.

CASVA currently supports the Andrew W. Mellon Professor, a two-year appointment of a midcareer scholar; the Samuel H. Kress Professor, an appointment of one academic year of a distinguished scholar; the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor, a three-to-six-month appointment of a scholar who advances his or her own research on subjects associated with the Gallery's permanent collection; and senior fellows, visiting senior fellows, postdoctoral fellows, and predoctoral fellows. A board of advisors, composed of seven or eight art historians appointed to rotating terms, serves as a selection committee to review all fellowship applications.

Established in 2003, the Wyeth Lecture in American Art is a biennial event hosted by CASVA and supported by the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. Wyeth lecturers are chosen on the basis of their outstanding contributions to the study of and scholarship on American art. Lectures are available as podcasts as indicated in listings on the Gallery website.

CASVA publishes the proceedings of symposia, part of the Gallery's series Studies in the History of Art, and Seminar Papers. Both series are available for purchase on shop.nga.gov. Volumes of Studies in the History of Art published more than five years ago can be accessed and downloaded on JSTOR.An annual report, Center, published each fall, summarizes research and activities that took place during the preceding academic year. The full archive of Center is available for free download on CASVA's publications page on the Gallery website.

Press Contact:
Christina Brown, (202) 842-6598, [email protected]