CLARK ART INSTITUTE’S RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PROGRAM PRESENTS FREE LECTURE ON PROLIFIC PHOTOGRAPHER

For Immediate Release
October 28, 2015

Williamstown, Massachusetts—Maureen G. Shanahan, a Fellow in the Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program, presents the free lecture “The Orientalist and the Asylum: Gaëtan Gatain de Clérambault’s Veiled Photography” on Tuesday, November 10 at 5:30 pm. The lecture will be held at the Lunder Center at Stone Hill on the Clark’s campus.

De Clérambault (1872–1934), a French psychiatrist, was also an acclaimed painter and a professional photographer. From 1914 to 1918 he took about 30,000 photographs, some of which were taken as part of a research project involving symptoms of hysteria. For a period of time, de Clérambault conducted classes on the art of draped costumes at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Shanahan is a professor of art history at James Madison University. Her monograph, The Colorist Doctor: Fernand Léger, Memory, and the Nation, is now under advanced review at Pennsylvania State University Press. She and Ana María Reyes (Boston University) co-edited Simón Bolívar: An Icon Unhinged, a collection of essays forthcoming from University Press of Florida. She has also published articles on Léger, early film, and French modernism in Cinema Journal, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, International Journal of Art & Design Education, Michigan Feminist Studies, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, and various edited collections, encyclopedias, and exhibition catalogs. While at the Clark, she is researching the psychiatric and photographic works of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault as a lens into the visual epistemologies of French colonialism during and after World War I.

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, consisting of 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.

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