March 7, 2019

Art historian Leo Mazow to speak March 13

Edward Hopper, “Room with a View.” Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust, H-166.1936.

Edward Hopper, “Room in New York,” Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Charitable Trust, H-166.1936.

Art Historian Leo G. Mazow will present the next Hixson-Lied Visiting Scholar Lecture at 5:30 p.m. March 13 in the auditorium of Sheldon Museum of Art. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Mazow will be discussing Edward Hopper’s “Hotel Consciousness.” The lecture will examine Hopper’s iconic painting “Room in New York,” which is owned by the Sheldon, alongside his commercial work for hotel trade journals.

His book, “Hopper’s Hotels,” explores the hotel, motel and boarding house subjects of Hopper’s body of work.

“This is a modest-size body of work — four hotel paintings, one motel painting, one boarding house painting, and several magazine covers — but it captures powerfully the themes of transience, waiting and social alienation for which the artist is best known,” Mazow said.

Mazow is the Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA). He received his Ph.D. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

His articles have appeared in such journals as American Art, Art Bulletin, Design and Culture and Winterthur Portfolio. His book “Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound” won the 2013 Eldredge Prize, awarded by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

For more information on the series, call 402-472-5522 or send e-mail to schoolaahd@unl.edu.