The Lamar Dodd School of Art will present a lecture by Luke Syson, the Metropolitan Museum of Art curator, on Jan. 30 at 5:30 p.m. in Room S151 of the art school. Part of the Visiting Artist/Scholar Lecture Series, the lecture is open free to the public.
Syson is the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Curator in charge in the European and decorative arts department of the Metropolitan Museum. He served as curator of Italian painting at the National Gallery in London from 2003 to 2011, during which time he curated five exhibitions, including Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, which ran from November 2011 to February 2012.
Syson’s UGA lecture will focus on da Vinci as its subject, specifically the Renaissance artist’s ideas about relief and other connections between painting and sculpture.
“Leonardo was always keen to promote the superiority of painting over sculpture-by which he meant carving in stone,” Syson said. “Painting, he believed, could simply represent more of the seen universe. And he was worried by the palpable, three-dimensional reality of sculpture-an artist could not depict volume if the work of art already had it.”
