Art critic and historian James Elkins from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago will present two lectures at ETSU Feb. 21 and 22.Both free public lectures begin at 7 p.m. in the Ball Hall auditorium and are sponsored by the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts and the Department of Art and Design.

“How to Use Your Eyes, and How Some Animals Use Their Eyes” will be the topic presented Monday, Feb. 21. In this lecture, Elkins will discuss exercises in seeing and the relevance of animal vision for understanding human vision.

On Tuesday, Feb. 22, Elkins will present “The Concepts of Empathy and Sympathy,” a philosophic paper on absorption, immersion, theatricality, self-awareness and other related concepts in contemporary art theory.

Elkins grew up in Ithaca, N.Y., separated from Cornell University by a quarter-mile of woods once owned by naturalist Laurence Palmer. He earned his B.A. in English and art history from Cornell, and during his college years, he took summer hitchhiking trips to Alaska, Mexico, Guatemala, the Caribbean and Columbia. He later received a graduate degree in painting and a second graduate degree in art history before earning his Ph.D. in art history, all at the University of Chicago.

He is currently the E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Elkins’ writing focuses on the history and theory of images in art, science and nature. Some of his books are exclusively on fine art, including Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? and What Painting Is.

Others include scientific and non-art images, writing systems and archaeology (The Domain of Images and On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them). His current projects include a series called the Stone Summer Theory Institutes, a book entitled The Project of Painting: 1900-2000, a series entitled Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism in the Visual Art, and a book written against Camera Lucida.

For more information or special assistance for those with disabilities, contact the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts at (423) 439-TKTS (8587) or artsinfo@etsu.edu.

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