Met Curator in Residence at Smith as Kennedy Professor

Keith Christiansen, the Jayne Wrightsman Curator of European Paintings at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, will take up residence at Smith College this fall as the college's Ruth and Clarence Kennedy Professor in Renaissance Studies.

As part of his visiting professorship, Christiansen will give three public lectures on Italian painters. The first lecture, "The Devotional Style of Giovanni Bellini," will take place September 21. On October 5, Christiansen will lecture on "Caravaggio's Late Style," and on October 26, he will speak on "Tiepolo and the Notion of Pictorial Invention." All three lectures are free, wheelchair accessible and open to the public and will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Wright Hall Auditorium.

As the Kennedy Professor, Christiansen will also teach a colloquium at Smith titled "Art and Theory in Italy: 1550-1672" in the Department of Art's art history program.

Christiansen, who has taught art history and archeology at Columbia University in New York and at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, has written numerous books and articles and contributed to exhibition catalogues for museums in Europe and the U.S. Most recently he edited the catalogues for the Metropolitan Museum's exhibitions, "From Van Eyck to Bruegel" and "Giambattista Tiepolo." He has also coordinated the museum's recent exhibitions, "Donato Creti: Melancholy and Perfection" and "From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

Christiansen has won the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for distinguished catalog for his 1988 edition of "Painting in Renaissance Siena;" the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for his 1986 article, "Caravaggio and 'l'esempio davanti del naturale;" and the Mitchell Prize for best first book in art history, "Gentile da Fabriano," published in 1983.

Christiansen earned his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed his doctoral studies in art history at Harvard University.

September 2, 1999