Amy Freund, associate professor and The Kleinheinz Family Endowment for the Arts and Education Endowed Chair in Art History, Southern Methodist University, Dallas
Why do we love pictures of our dogs (and of other people’s dogs) so much? This talk will situate the Kimbell’s recently acquired painting Dog Guarding a Basket of Grapes, 1836, by Georg Ferdinand Waldmüller, in the history of dog portraiture in early modern and modern Europe. Thinking seriously about the tradition of dog portraiture provides an unexpected way of answering big questions about how we understand the human self, our intimate and contradictory relationships with animals, and even the history of art itself.
These lectures, part of a continuing series, introduce the permanent collection and selected exhibitions on view at the Kimbell. They are free and open to the public.
