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For Immediate Release: January 26, 2005
Contact: Marsha Mullan
610-690-5717
mmullan2@swarthmore.edu
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/

Joseph J. Rishel Jr. will present the 2005 Lee Frank Lecture in the History of Art at Swarthmore College on Tuesday, Feb. 8, at 4:30 p.m. in the Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema. Rishel is the Gisela and Dennis Alter Senior Curator of European Painting Before 1900 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and curator of the John G. Johnson Collection and the Rodin Museum. The topic of his talk will be the Philadelphia Art Museum's upcoming (Fall 2006) exhibition, "Latin American Art 1492-1825." The talk is free and open to the public.

"The Arts in Latin America (1492-1825)" is an ambitious, multi-media and multi-national exhibition of some 400 works of art produced in colonial Spanish and Portuguese America. The show will feature masterworks of painting, sculpture, featherwork, luxurious furniture, metalwork, ceramics and textiles from North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean. It will be one of the first comprehensive exhibitions to give a synthetic view of colonial Latin American art, moving beyond national boundaries to trace vital, Pan-American connections and exchanges as well as important regional differences. The exhibition will present significant works of art largely unknown to United States and European audiences in a fresh, new context.

"The Arts in Latin America: 1492-1825" will present magnificent, sometimes startling, and largely unknown works of art in all media. The exhibition will be both thematic and chronological, beginning in 1492 with Christopher Columbus's first encounter with the people of the Caribbean and closing during the final moments of the colonial era, a period marked not only by the independence movements and formation of national states but also by the rise of academic art movements. Visitors will be introduced to manuscripts and maps that illustrate how the earliest contact between Europeans and indigenous people created a crisis in identity and self-representation. They will savor superb examples of craftsmanship - elaborate vestments decorated with colored feathers, exquisite furniture inlaid with tortoise shell, mother-of-pearl and ivory, lacquered screens and chests - that reflect the interchange between diverse Asian, African, European and Latin American cultures. Several established and lesser known artistic personalities will emerge through their creations of elaborate painted sculpture, architectural interiors and paintings.

Joseph J. Rishel Jr. was educated at Hobart College and the University of Chicago and began his museum career at The Art Institute of Chicago in 1967. In 1971, he joined the staff of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, becoming first associate, then full curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900, as well as curator of the John G. Johnson Collection and the Rodin Museum. He has organized and co-organized a series of groundbreaking and internationally acclaimed exhibitions, including "The Second Empire 1852-1870: Art in France Under Napoleon III" (1978); "Sir Edwin Landseer" (1981); "Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: The Annenberg Collection" (1989); "Cézanne" (1996); "Delacroix: The Late Work" (1998); "Goya: Another Look" (1999); "The Splendor of 18th Century Rome" (2000); "Van Gogh: Face to Face" (2000); "Degas and the DanceÓ (2003); and "Manet and the Sea" (2004).