Lecture Series

Barkan Lectures

2025

The AI Heist: How the Tech Industry Exploits the History of Art & What We Can Do to Stop It 

Sonja Drimmer, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Wednesday, September 24, 2025  | 4:15pm               
Tisch Library, Room 316              
Medford Campus

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Margaret Henderson Floyd Memorial Lectures

2025

Using Geometry to Rethink Three Gothic Chestnuts: Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame, and Chartres

Robert Bork, Professor, Iowa College of Art and Design, Gothic architecture and geometry in art

Monday, November 10, 2025  | 4:30pm               
Tisch Library, room 304           
Medford Campus

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Barkan Lecture Archive 

Constructing Mercantile Identities through Material Religion in ancient West Asia

Nancy Highcock, Assistant Keeper, Jaleh Hearn Curator for Ancient Middle East, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford Univ.  Tuesday, November 19, 2024 | 4:30pm               

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Gertrude, Her Psalter, and Her Sisters in Medieval Rus

Christian Raffensperger, Kenneth E. Wray Chair in the Humanities at Wittenberg University, as well as a professor and chair of the History Department               
Thursday March 7, 2024 | 4:30pm               

Myth & Menagerie: Seeing Lions in the 19th Century

Katie Hornstein, Associate Professor, Dartmouth College                 
Thursday February 1, 2024 | 4:30pm               

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Fraught: On Sculpting Slavery and Freedom

Adrienne Childs, Independent curator & art historian, Senior Consulting Curator, The Phillips Collection               
Wednesday, October 11, 2023 | 5:30pm               

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What Does Art History Tell Us About the Shroud of Turin?

Andrew R. Casper, Professor of Art History at Miami University in Oxford, OH               
Monday, October 23, 2023 | 5:30pm               

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Jacob Lawrence in Nigeria: Black Orpheus and the Mbari Club

Kimberli Gant, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum               
Monday, April 10, 2023 | 5:30pm               

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The Matter of Families: Exhibiting African Art and Kinship in Dakar, 1966

Lauren Taylor, Assistant Professor, Art History, African Studies, Pennsylvania State University               
Monday, October 31, 2022 | 5:30pm               

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Secret Code, Lost Language, Nonsense, Or Hoax: The Voynich Manuscript’s Enduring Mysteries

Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director Medieval Academy of America               
Wednesday, October 19, 2022 | 5:30pm               

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Margaret Henderson Floyd Lecture Archive 

A Decent Home" Everyone Deserves - Film Presentation and Discussion

Sara Terry, Filmmaker             
Thursday, October 10, 2024 | 5:00pm              

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Alsar Atelier

Alejandro Saldarriaga Rubio             
Thursday, November 2, 2023 | 5:30pm                       
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"Go Outside"

Dong-Ping Wong, Founding Director Food New York               
Thursday, March 2, 2023 | 5:30pm                            
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Building Castles on the Sea

Christy Anderson, Professor of Art History, University of Toronto               
Thursday, February 20, 2020 | 6:00pm                          
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A Century in the Making: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Michelle Wilkinson, Museum Curator, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture               
Monday, March 27, 2017 | 5:30pm                           
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American Glamour: Architecture and Design in the 1950s

Alice Friedman, Grace Slack McNeil Professor of the History of American Art and Architecture, Wellesley College               
Tuesday, April 7, 2015 | 5:30pm                            
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Humanizing Megascale

World-renowned Architect Moshe Sadfie               
Monday, December 2, 2013 | 6:00pm               
ASEAN Auditorium Cabot Center, 170 Packard Avenue               
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Barkan Symposium

From Monument to Memorial: Space, Commemoration, and Representation in America Now

Keynote Address by Professor Mabel O. Wilson, Columbia GSAPP               
Friday, March 29, 2019 | 9:00am-5:30pm               
Aidekman Arts Center               

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Desires for the Global

Caroline Jones, Professor of Art History in the History, Theory & Criticism of Architecture and Art Program, MIT               
Wednesday, February 25, 2015 | 5:30pm               

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Exhibiting Asco

Ondine Chavoya, Associate Professor of Art History and Latina/o Studies, Williams College               
Monday, February 13, 2012 | 5:30-7:00pm               

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