WILLIAMS PROFESSOR CHRIS WATERS PRESENTS FREE MACHINE AGE LECTURE AT CLARK ART INSTITUTE

For Immediate Release
April 7, 2015
[Digital images available upon request]

Williamstown, Massachusetts—Chris Waters, Hans W. Gatzke ’38 Professor of Modern European History in the Department of History at Williams College, presents a gallery talk on Machine Age Modernism: Prints from the Daniel Cowin Collection at the Clark Art Institute on Friday, April 24 at 3 pm. The free lecture will be held in the Clark Center, West Pavilion.

A specialist in modern British history, Waters provides a social and cultural historical framework for the prints on view. He is the author of British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884–1914 and co-editor of Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain, 1945–1964, and author of some thirty articles on various aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British social and cultural history.

Machine Age Modernism captures the tumultuous aesthetic and political climate of the years before, during, and after World Wars I and II in Britain, focusing on the linocut movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition is on view through May 17.

ABOUT CHRIS WATERS

Chris Waters received his BA in history from California State University, Long Beach and his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He joined the History Department at Williams in 1989, where he has been teaching courses in modern British history, modern European history, gender and sexuality, and the philosophy of history. He has been an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University and a fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina and the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has served as vice president and president of the Northeast Conference on British Studies and director of the Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford University.

ABOUT THE CLARK

The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library, open to the public with more than 240,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, children 18 and younger, and students with valid ID. For more information, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.

Press contact:
[email protected]