Friday, November 5 – Saturday, November 6 at the Olin Arts Center (2004)

The Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection in the Bates College Museum of Art provides an intimate look into the life of this enigmatic modernist painter from Maine. With ninety-nine drawings, dozens of family photographs, jewelry, travel souvenirs, and ephemera, this personal archive provides a wealth of information about the artist’s life. Yet the collection raises as many questions as it answers.On November 5 and 6, Hartley scholars will speak at a symposium organized in conjunction with the current exhibition Marsden Hartley: Image and Identity, which examines the artist’s autobiographical practices. Topics to be discussed include the construction of regional and sexual identity in Hartley’s Maine work; the reception of, and criticism around, Hartley and his modernist contemporaries; and wartime politics and the representation of the male body. A panel discussion following the lectures will bring the conversation to the present, questioning contemporary investigations into sexuality and art.

Free and open to the public