June 1, Monday Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Michael Brooks is our Quarterback.
June 3, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable on Zoom – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Thom Collins, executive director and president of the Barnes Foundation. His topic—The Enduring Influence of Dr. Albert C. Barnes.
Educator, art historian, administrator, and author Thom Collins joined the Barnes in 2015 after serving for five years as director of the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, Florida. Prior to that, he was director of the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, and Baltimore’s Contemporary Museum. He began his curatorial career as the Newhall Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A Media native, Collins was a 1988 honors graduate at Swarthmore and then obtained a master’s degree from Northwestern University.
June 7, Monday Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Alina Macneal is our Quarterback.
June 10, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable on Zoom – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is David Espey. His topic—The Peace Corps: Sixty Years, Countless Stories.
David Espey joined the year-old Peace Corps in 1962 after his graduation from Hamilton College. He served in the organization’s first project in Morocco, where he taught English as a second language to high school students. His presentation will mix an overview of the 60-year history of the Peace Corps with slides and anecdotes of his own adventures in Morocco, along with stories from other Peace Corps volunteers he has encountered who served in Asia, Africa, South America, and eastern Europe. He will compare the Peace Corps to other forms of international development and consider its effects on volunteers and on the countries where they served.
Following his Peace Corps service, David earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins and a doctorate in English from the University of Michigan. He came to Penn in 1979 after teaching at Colorado State University. He also taught internationally, spending four years as a senior Fulbright lecturer in Morocco (1977-79), Turkey (1990-91), and Japan (2000-01); another year as a visiting professor in Istanbul (2007-08); and many summers in England directing the Penn in London program. His main literary interests are the literature of empire, travel literature, modern English and American fiction, and creative nonfiction. He has published an anthology of travel writing, Writing the Journey: Essays, Stories and Poems on Travel (Longman, 2004).
Video: To see a recording of this presentation, click on Play Event. Click on the play button at the bottom left of the screen that comes up to see the presentation. Put your computer into full screen mode to get the best image.
June 14, Monday Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Roberta Kangilaski is our Quarterback.
June 17, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable on Zoom – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Helen Drutt, known as connoisseur, patron, visionary, devotée, and doyenne of craft. Her topic—A Passionate Observer.
Helen will show images that explore her role in the crafts from the 1970s to the present, described in her own words as follows: “Seeing and discovering [the work of craft artists] and organizing exhibitions dissolved into the greater notion of caretaking and securing history for the artist.” This greater notion has meant “searching, conceiving, supporting exhibitions, maintaining a library, as well as attending events which expand the dialogue” on the crafts. Helen writes that she was “quite taken years ago” with Bernard Berenson’s writing in The Passionate Sightseer. “He kept comparing his latest impressions with his first. He had written about the visual arts for 67 years and at 92, was still correcting his manuscripts. I have been looking since I was born. At 90 years of age, I am looking back to the crafts over 60 years. Berenson’s greed was confined to reading, talking, thinking and above all using his eyes. I felt a great simpatico with this aspect of his persona.”
The Helen Drutt Gallery, founded in Philadelphia in 1973, was among the first in the nation committed to modern and contemporary craft. American Craft magazine stated in 1979 that it was to craft to what Alfred Stieglitz’s Gallery 291 was to photography. Helen W. Drutt English has published numerous essays, lectured widely, served on numerous panels and boards, and conceived many craft exhibitions, including Brooching It Diplomatically: A Tribute to Madeleine K. Albright, Poetics of Clay: An International Perspective, Challenging the Châtelaine! and a curated show of American studio jewelry for the Museo del Gioiello in Vicenza, Italy. Her collection of studio jewelry has been exhibited internationally, and in 2002, 800 pieces were acquired for the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She built a permanent collection of contemporary crafts for The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia (2014), and is currently building a collection of American crafts for the National Museum of Sweden. She has just completed work on her latest show, Rings!, an international exhibit of more than 100 rings, on view from June 5 through July 17 at Moore College of Art.
Video: To see a recording of this presentation, click on Play Event. Click on the play button at the bottom left of the screen that comes up to see the presentation. Put your computer into full screen mode to get the best image.
June 21, Monday Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Matthew McGovern is our Quarterback.
June 24, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable on Zoom – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
TBA
June 28, Monday Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Tom Ricks is our Quarterback.