Wayne State University's Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute and the Friends of the Freer House are hosting a special public lecture by Linda Merrill, former curator of American art, Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery/Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Merrill will recount the facts and fictions surrounding the creation of Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room (1876-77), the extravagant interior decoration by James McNeill Whistler, and tell the less-familiar story of the room's brief life in Detroit (1906-1919). The lecture is co-sponsored by the Associates of the American Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
WHEN AND WHERE:
2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25, Detroit Institute of Arts. There will also be a post-lecture reception and tours at the Charles Lang Freer House, 71 E. Ferry St., Detroit (one block north of the DIA). RSVP requested; call (313) 872-1790.
REGISTRATION:
Lecture at the DIA is free with museum admission. Reception and tours at the Free House are complimentary for members of the Friends of the Freer house; $10 for non-members.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Linda Merrill was curator of American art at the Freer Gallery of Art for 12 years. During her tenure, she oversaw the conservation of the Peacock Room and wrote an exhaustive history of Whistler's project, The Peacock Room: A Cultural Biography. Merrill's other publications include books on the Whistler vs. Ruskin libel trial of 1878 and an edition of the Whistler-Freer correspondence. As the Margaret and Terry Stent Curator of American Art at the High Museum in Atlanta, she organized After Whistler: The Artist's Influence on American Painting (2003), an exhibition subsequently shown at the Detroit Institute of Arts as American Attitude. She now teaches art history at Emory University in Atlanta.