CLARK ART INSTITUTE FELLOW TO PRESENT FREE LECTURE ABOUT OTTOMAN PAINTER

For Immediate Release
October 2, 2018

Williamstown, Massachusetts—Gülru Çakmak, a Florence Gould Foundation Fellow at the Clark Art Institute, presents the free lecture, “Painting, Photography and the Long Duration of History in Osman Hamdi’s Paintings” on Tuesday, October 16 at 5:30 pm. The lecture will be held in the Clark’s auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center.

Çakmak discusses a series of paintings made in the 1880s and 1890s by the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi (1842–1910), highlighting a set of pictorial and compositional devices through which the paintings thematize the long duration of “history” in general, and Ottoman history in particular.

Gülru Çakmak is an associate professor in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the author of Jean-Léon Gérôme and the Crisis of History Painting in the 1850s (Liverpool University Press, 2017). At the Clark, she is working on her next book project, Materiality, Process, and Facture in English and French Sculpture at the End of the Nineteenth Century, drawing on the research she has conducted as a research fellow at the Henry Moore Institute and as a visiting scholar at the Yale Center for British Art. While at the Clark, she will also work on an article on Gérôme’s Snake Charmer.

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 Institute’s library, consisting of more than 275,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark, which also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide.

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. Free admission is available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; EBT Card to Culture; Bank of America Museums on Us; and Blue Star Museums. For more information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.

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