Artist Enrique Martínez Celaya is launching The Lecture Project in his Culver City studio on February 6, 2019, in association with the University of Southern California. First hosted by Celaya in his Miami studio between 2010-2012, this series of public talks by renowned writers, historians, and philosophers reflect on the connection between art and ethics.

The inaugural lecture will be given by Alexander Nemerov, an author and scholar who recently appeared in the HBO documentary The Price of Everything. In “Summoning Pearl Harbor”, Nemerov will consider the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, meditating on questions such as: How do words make the past appear? In what way does the historian summon bygone events? What is this kind of remembering, and for whom do we recall the dead, or the past? Does the past even want to be remembered?

Nemerov is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. He has written many books, including Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine, short-listed for the 2016 Marfield Prize for arts writing. In 2017, Nemerov delivered the 66th annual Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery.

On Wednesday, March 6, Elizabeth Prelinger will give the second lecture “Shaping and Controlling an Artistic Reputation: Edvard Munch's Dilemma”. Here, she will explore how Munch navigated critical opinion about his art late in his career, when his reputation was exploited for political capital. Despite his “modern style” and anti-Nazi stance, after Germany invaded Norway in April 1940 they declared Munch a German “cultural hero”, exploiting his art for political capital.

Prelinger is the Keyser Family Professor of Art History at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she has taught for over three decades. She has written extensively on art history, including exhibition catalogs, articles, and book reviews. Prelinger has curated a number of exhibitions on Munch, most recently in 2010 at the National Gallery of Art, working with Mellon Curator Emeritus Andrew Robison. In 2018, she co-curated an exhibition for Georgetown’s Special Collections on WWI culture entitled “A War to End All Wars?”

About Enrique Martínez Celaya

Born in Cuba in 1964, the artist Enrique Martínez Celaya has created an extensive body of work in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, installation, and printmaking. He was trained as an artist and physicist, earning a BS in Applied & Engineering Physics from Cornell University, a MS in Quantum Electronics from University of California Berkeley and a MFA in Painting from University of California, Santa Barbara. Martínez Celaya is the first person to hold the position of Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at the University of Southern California, and is also a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College and a Fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. Martínez Celaya’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. He has created projects and exhibitions for the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig and recently started a multiyear partnership with The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

About The Lecture Project

The Lecture Project is a series of public lectures by prominent writers, historians, and philosophers on the connection between art and ethics. Curated and hosted by the studio of Enrique Martínez Celaya in association with the University of Southern California, it reflects a commitment to re-assert the intellectual and ethical responsibilities of art and criticism while exploring their relevance for public life. The Lecture Project was inaugurated in March 2010 at Martínez Celaya’s studio in Miami. Funded in part by the Knight Foundation, it was first active through 2012 and included eleven lectures. The Lecture Project is an important part of Whale & Star, created by Enrique Martínez Celaya in 1998 as an evolving idea of social and intellectual interaction. At present, it also consists of an imprint, hosts several working visits each year for poor and at-risk children, maintains a modest residency and intern program, and offers four small scholarships.

Lecture Project Details

Where: Studio Enrique Martínez Celaya, 11240 Playa Court, Culver City, CA.

When: Wednesday, February 6, 2019, 6:30-8:30pm.

Entry: Admission is Free but registration is required.