This is a past event
We are delighted to welcome Professor Milette Gaifman (Yale University) to Aberdeen, to deliver the Geddes-Harrower-Lectures 2023. Over four free, public lectures, taking place on the University’s Old Aberdeen campus, Professor Gaifman will speak about:
Classification and the History of Greek Art and Architecture
How do classifications inform our understanding of artworks from Classical antiquity? How did labels and illustrations shape the formation of the history of Greek art and its categories? In this lecture series Milette Gaifman explores the fundamental role of the classificatory act in our viewing and understanding of Greek art and architecture in the modern era. Taking a Classical Athenian monument as a case in point, the series examines the complex relationships between historical artefacts and scholarly taxonomies, and the ways of expanding our conceptual frameworks when looking at the visual arts of the past.
All lectures are free and open to the public. Each lecture starts at 6pm and runs until 7.15pm. Lectures 1 and 4 are followed by a drinks reception.
Wednesday, 15 March, 2023, King’s College Conference Centre: How to Classify a Monument: Taxonomies and their Limits
Friday, 17 March, 2023. New King’s, NK01: How to Label a Monument: from Antiquity to The Antiquities of Athens
Monday, 20 March, 2023, New King’s, NK01: How to Picture a Monument in the Eighteenth Century
Wednesday, 22 March 2023, King’s College Conference Centre: Beyond Classification
About the Speaker
Milette Gaifman is the Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Classics and History of Art, and current Chair of the History of Art Department at Yale University.
Milette Gaifman received her B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1997, and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2005. Before coming to Yale in September 2005, she was the Hanadiv Fellow and Lecturer in Classical Art and Archaeology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 2004–2005.
Milette Gaifman is a scholar of ancient art and archaeology, focusing primarily on Greek art of the Archaic and Classical periods. Her research interests include the interaction between visual culture and religion, the variety of forms in the arts of antiquity (from the naturalistic to the non-figural), the interactive traits of various artistic media, and the reception of Greek art in later periods.
Recent publications include: The Art of Libation in Classical Athens, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), Aniconism in Greek Antiquity, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), and The Embodied Object in Classical Antiquity, special issue of Art History, co-edited with Verity Platt and Michael Squire (June 2018).
About the Geddes-Harrower-Chair
The Geddes-Harrower-Chair in Greek Art and Archaeology was established through a bequest by John Harrower (1857-1933), Professor of Greek at Aberdeen. It is named in honour of Harrower and his father-in-law (and predecessor as Professor of Greek) William Geddes. The Geddes-Harrower-Chair is a visiting Professorship and has brought, over the last sixty years, some of the most renowned historians of Greek Art to Aberdeen. Previous Geddes-Harrower Professors include Bernard Ashmole, Robin Osborne, Brunilde S. Ridgway, and Mary Beard.