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Art and Faith Now
Mellon Lecture
Tags for: Art and Faith Now
- Lecture
- Tickets Required
A Conversation with Art Historian Dr. Raymond Silverman and Painter George Makary
Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 6:00–7:00 p.m.
Location: Gartner Auditorium
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center
Free; ticket required
Speakers
Dr. Raymond Silverman is professor emeritus in the Department of History of Art and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. In 2002, he joined the University of Michigan faculty to launch a new interdisciplinary graduate program in museum studies; he stepped down as director of the program in 2012. Silverman is a historian of the visual cultures of Africa. Most of his research writing was undertaken in Ghana and Ethiopia, where he explored a range of subjects dealing with historical and social dimensions of metallurgy and the visual culture of religion, specifically of Islam and indigenous religions in Ghana, and the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia. His publications include three books dealing with Ethiopian art, Ethiopian Church Art: Painters, Patrons, Purveyors (2022); Painting Ethiopia: The Life and Work of Qes Adamu Tesfaw (2005); and Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity (1999), as well as articles and essays on a range of topics of the arts of Ghana, Ethiopia, museums, and heritage. Silverman has also edited two volumes dealing with museums in Africa and beyond, National Museums in Africa: Identity, History and Politics (2022) and Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges (2015).
George Makary is a Coptic, Canadian-Egyptian painter residing and working in Ottawa, Canada. He studied fine arts at Ontario College of Art and Design University (BFA) and art history and diasporic and transnational studies (MA) at the University of Toronto. George has produced hundreds of internationally commissioned icons, murals, and numerous works for churches, chapels, monasteries, museums, publications, exhibitions, and individuals.
About The Event
Join us for a lively conversation between art historian Dr. Raymond Silverman and artist George Makary as they consider the contemporary religious arts of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Coptic Orthodoxy, as well as the role of museums in presenting historical and contemporary arts of faith. Makary provides insight into the artist’s role in making effective religious paintings (icons) for the Coptic Orthodox community, while Silverman draws from more than three decades of field-based research working with and interviewing artists in Ethiopia. The discussion is moderated by Dr. Kristen Windmuller-Luna (curator of African art at the CMA and curator of the CMA’s exhibition Africa & Byzantium).
This talk is supported by the Mellon Foundation.
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