SVA presents Apertures of Awe: Windows to the World Made Strange by Images

A panel discussion exploring the relationship between image and imagination, sight and insight, surprise and recognition. The panelists include art historian Shira Brisman, photographer Daniel Cherrin, and art scholar Joel Upton. Brisman is a PhD candidate in the History of Art at Yale University and former curatorial assistant at the Jewish Museum in New York.  Her dissertation examines how Northern Renaissance artists like Albrecht Dürer began to conceive of the hand-written letter as possessing message-bearing properties analogous to the work of art.  Upton is Professor of Art and the History of Art at Amherst College, where he guides students through a semester-long encounter with a single painting.  He’s currently working on “the ‘art’ of beholding: a contemplative guide to Netherlandish painting.”  Cherrin is a photographer who documents the struggles of Bedouins in Egypt, African refugees and Palestinians in Israel.  He is committed to empowerment through creative engagement as a member of ActiveVision, an Israeli association of artists and filmmakers who use images to promote awareness and social change among disenfranchised communities by putting the camera in their hands. Moderated by poet Ashley Makar, graduate associate in Religion and the Arts at Yale Divinity School’s Institute of Sacred Music. She is the co-editor of the online magazine killingthebuddha.com, “a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches.”

Presented by the Honors Program.

The Honors Program is an interdisciplinary course of study for talented, intellectually ambitious students who work closely with one another and with specially selected studio and liberal arts instructors. The curriculum brings together literature, history, philosophy, and art history in order to focus on the connections among them and complement students’ studio coursework. Honors study is augmented by public and private lectures, museum visits, events at artist studios and theaters, and a spring trip abroad.