As part of the Art History Speaker Series, Rebecca Martin Nagy, director of University of Florida’s Harn Museum, will be on campus Thursday, March 1 to give a lecture entitled “Ethiopian Contemporary Art: Icons of the Past, Images of the Present.”
The lecture will take place in Yeager Recital Hall on Thursday, March 1 at 6:00.
Since 2001, Nagy has made six research trips to Ethiopia in preparation for the exhibition “Continuity and Change: Three Generations of Ethiopian Art” currently on view at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida in Gainesville. In Ethiopia, Nagy has focused on visiting artists in their studios and seeing modern and contemporary Ethiopian art in private collections, museums and other institutions. The resulting exhibition focuses on the work of academically trained artists active in Addis Ababa from the reign of Emperor Haile Sellassie to the present. Whereas media coverage of Ethiopia typically focuses on political, social and environmental problems, the work of Ethiopia’s artists reflects the beauty and cultural richness of this fascinating nation in the Horn of Africa.