Twenty-seventh annual Hilla Rebay Lecture 
Hollis Clayson: "Episodes from the Visual Culture of Electric Paris"

Professor Clayson's analysis of Parisian visual culture is rooted in the often overlooked fact that lighting (éclairage) was a key attribute of the City of Light in the 19th century. Clayson maintains that the forms of artificial illumination, their visual properties, and the era's debates about them provided circumstances that stimulated aesthetically innovative art. Her lecture will analyze works by Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, and several of the era's leading caricaturists.

Hollis Clayson is a historian of 19th-century art, and Professor of Art History and Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. In 2013–14, she served as the Samuel H. Kress Professor in the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and in 2014, she was named a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French government in honor of her advancement of French culture. Her current book, Electric Paris: The Visual Cultures of the City of Light in the Era of Thomas Edison, is underway.

Free with no advanced registration and includes a reception.

The Hilla Rebay Lecture brings distinguished scholars to the Guggenheim Museum to examine significant issues in the theory, criticism, and history of art. This annual program is made possible by The Hilla von Rebay Foundation.