Inventing the Female Nude
Professor Andrew Stewart will deliver the tenth annual McKibben Lecture in Classical Studies, “Inventing the Female Nude: Praxiteles, Phryne, and the Knidia,” at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, April 23, 2015, in Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, Room 101. The event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served.
Perhaps the most famous statue of the ancient Greek sculptor Praxiteles was his lost masterpiece, the Aphrodite of Knidos, which was copied numerous times. The lecture will discuss the statue’s alleged model, the sculptor’s mistress Phryne; its consequent address to its audiences, both male and female; the messages that it may have sought to send to each of them; and selected episodes in its reception from the Renaissance to the present.
About Andrew Stewart
Stewart is professor of ancient Mediterranean art and archaeology and Petris Professor of Greek Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Cambridge University.
Stewart has taught at the University of Otago in New Zealand as well as at the University of California, and he has held visiting appointments at The Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. He is curator of Mediterranean archaeology for the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at U. C. Berkeley, and he has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Crete, New Zealand, and Israel.
His many honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Distinguished Teaching Award from U. C. Berkeley. Among his extensive publications are eight books, including a recent introduction to art in the Hellenistic world, published by Cambridge University Press, and an earlier, two-volume study of Greek sculpture.
About the McKibben Lectures
The McKibben Lecture in Classical Studies is sponsored by the Department of Classics and honors Bill and Betty McKibben, whose combined service to Grinnell College and to the greater Grinnell community totaled more than a century.
Grinnell welcomes and encourages the participation of people with disabilities. The Joe Rosenfield '25 Center has accessible parking in the lot on the east side of the building. Room 101 is equipped with an induction hearing loop system. Accommodation requests may be made to conference operations.