Athens, Ga. – Helen C. Evans, the Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator for Byzantine Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will present the 2013 Shouky Shaheen Lecture Jan. 17 at 5:30 p.m. in room S151 of the University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art.
The lecture, which brings an internationally recognized artist or scholar to campus each year, is free and open to the public.
“We are so very fortunate to have Helen Evans come to UGA at this moment, particularly on the heels of the most recent major exhibition,” said Asen Kirin, associate professor and associate director in the school of art. “The Byzantine era straddles the Middle Ages as well as east and west, and so presents a very rich crossroads of the most treasured works of art in the history of man. Evans’ expertise on this work is essential.”
A specialist in early Christian, Byzantine and Armenian art, Evans installed the Jaharis Galleries of Byzantine Art at the Metropolitan Museum in 2000, which were its first galleries dedicated to Byzantine art, and expanded the galleries in 2008. Her most recent exhibition “Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition” covered the seventh through ninth centuries and closed in the summer of 2012 after receiving glowing reviews in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune. The New York Review of Books’ Peter Brown, the leading scholar of this era, called it “magnificently conceived.”
Evans will speak at UGA on her three recent Byzantine Metropolitan Museum exhibitions, including “Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition,” their impact on the Jaharis Galleries and the Metropolitan Museum.
The Shouky Shaheen Lecture was established through the generosity of Doris Shaheen as a birthday gift to her husband, Shouky, as an expression of their love for the arts and UGA. An Atlanta-based philanthropist and art collector, Shouky Shaheen has been a member of the Lamar Dodd School of Art Board of Visitors since 1998.
For more information on the lecture and Evans, see http://art.uga.edu/programs/lectures/shouky-sheehan-lectures/.
