Join us for a lecture by Dr. Suzanne Blier

On Tuesday, April 17, Dr. Suzanne Blier, Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University, will give a talk entitled “Art Matters: Sculpture, Peace, and Diplomacy in Ancient Yoruba" at 5 p.m. in Biggin Hall Auditorium. The lecture will explore the amazing terracottas and bronzes of ancient Ife and a king who brought peace to warring factions of a devastating civil war through the commissioning of art works and a new city plan. The public is invited.

Blier, an historian of African art and architecture in both the History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies Departments at Harvard, is the author of The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression (Cambridge University Press) and  African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power, among others. Her forthcoming book is Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power and Identity c.1300. (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and African's Worlds: A History (with Joseph C. Miller, Oxford University Press, 2012).

On Wednesday, April 18, Blier will give a free lecture/demonstration on the electronic geo-spatial database AfricaMap, a site of the WorldMap project. She serves as co-chair for Africamap. The lecture will be held at noon the Special Collections and Archives Department of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library. A reception will follow.

Blier’s lectures are the concluding programs for Art at the Threshold, a program of Auburn Connects! common reading program. Sponsored by Auburn University College of Liberal Arts’ Department of Art and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities.