Washington College Art History Professor Leads Talbot County Talk

CHESTERTOWN, MD — Benjamin Tilghman, assistant professor of art history at Washington College, will present the third and final talk in Washington College’s 2019 lecture series in Talbot County on November 7, 2019 with a discussion about how artworks from the past can inform our own ecological future.

The talk at Talbot Country Club, “Greening the Old Masters: An Environmental Art History,” begins at 6 p.m. Co-sponsored by Washington College and Talbot Country Club, it is open to the public for a fee of $15, which includes a reception that begins at 5:30 p.m.

In his talk, Tilghman will discuss how it is helpful to consider the legacies of cultures that have come before us as we all think more carefully about how we interact with our environment. Within art history, a small but growing number of scholars are looking again at artworks from the Middle Ages and Renaissance to consider how they shaped a vision of the natural world. This talk will consider what we might learn from art of the past as we look to reimagine our ecological future.

Tilghman’s scholarly research has focused on early medieval manuscripts such as the Book of Kells and Lindisfarne Gospels, but he has also written on the art of medieval Spain and the Italian Renaissance. A member of the Material Collective, a collaborative working group of medieval-art historians that explores innovative and more humane modes of scholarship, he is working a new project that examines stillness as a feature of art and the natural world in the early Middle Ages. As a curatorial fellow at the Walters Art Museum, he organized exhibitions on The Saint John’s Bible, miniature manuscripts, and Hubble Space Telescope imagery.

All events are at 6142 Country Club Drive, Easton, Maryland. The $15 fee pays for the reception and admittance, and is payable by credit card or check to Talbot Country Club at the event. Washington College is not accepting payments. Please RSVP by October 31, 2019 to Victoria Corcoran at 410-778-7805 or vcorcoran2@washcoll.edu.