Exploring the History of Art

The Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences will present Exploring the History of Art, a symposium honoring Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 22, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building.

Weil, the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts as well as director of the Sam Fox Arts Center and Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, is retiring this June. He has been associated with Washington University for 47 years, earning his undergraduate degree from Art History & Archaeology in 1961 and joining the faculty (after completing his doctorate at Columbia University) in 1968.

Exploring the History of Art is free and open to the public. A reception will immediately follow, at 5 p.m. The Women’s Building is located just north of Olin Library on the university’s Hilltop Campus. For more information, call (314) 935-9347.

The symposium will open with remarks from Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton, Ph.D., and Executive Vice Chancellor Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., followed by an introduction from William E. Wallace, Ph.D., the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor and chair of Art History & Archaeology.

Subsequent presenters — all former students and colleagues of Weil’s — include David Butler, Ph.D., director of the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University; C.D. Dickerson, a doctoral candidate at New York University; Felicia Else, Ph.D, assistant professor of visual arts at Gettysburg College; Francesca Herndon-Consagra, Ph.D., curator of prints, drawings and photographs for the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM); Judith Mann, Ph.D., curator of early European art for SLAM; Lisa Pon, Ph.D., assistant professor at Southern Methodist University; and Carol Purtle, Ph.D, professor at the University of Memphis.

Weil, a native St. Louisan, has been actively involved in both the university and greater St. Louis communities. He chaired Art History & Archaeology for a total of 10 years and served two terms as a SLAM trustee. In 1998 he was appointed director of the Kemper Art Museum (then the Washington University Gallery of Art) and was named director of the Sam Fox Arts Center at its inception the following year.

Weil’s scholarship and teaching fall into two primary areas: Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, and art connoisseurship. Publications include important contributions to the study of 16th- and 17th-century art history, notably The History and Decoration of the Ponte Sant’Angelo (1974). His numerous articles have appeared in the Journal of Garden History, the Bulletin of the Harvard University Art Museums and others.

Weil’s abiding passion for the study of works of art is reflected both in his teaching of connoisseurship and in his own curatorial activities. In 1982-83 he chaired the university’s Baroque Festival Planning Committee, for which he organized a symposium; planned an exhibition on Baroque theater and stage design; wrote a catalog; and produced an opera (Handel’s Orlando, directed by renowned conductor Nicholas McGegan).

In 1989 Weil co-curated (with Roger Ward) an exhibition of master drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. In 1997 he collaborated with Barbara Butts and Tom Rassieur on SLAM’s exhibition and catalog Men, Women, and God: German Renaissance Prints from St. Louis Collections.