Dawson W. Carr, Ph.D., The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art
Today we use the adjective ‘sublime’ to describe anything great from delicious food to a brilliant performance by a musician or athlete. In the history of ideas, ‘the sublime’ refers to something that overwhelms our ability to comprehend its grandiosity, producing a feeling of awe and pleasurable terror. As philosophers and artists explored human responses to sublime sights and events in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Vesuvius was active and its thrilling eruptions became a major subject for landscape artists. This talk will explore images of Mount St. Helens—before, during, and after the great eruption of 1980—in relation to the expression of the sublime in art through the ages.
Presented in conjunction with Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art, on view at Portland Art Museum through January 3, 2021, and now online for virtual visits.
This event will be held online. Links will be posted on Facebook page when the event starts.
https://www.facebook.com/mshinstitute/
If you can’t make the event, we will upload the recording to our YouTube channel the following day.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC21fnDewX_begL0xw8U3ljg
Mount St. Helens Institute
We are excited to partner with the Mount St. Helens Institute on a series of online experiences during the exhibition. Founded in 1996, the Mount St. Helens Institute connects people of all ages to Mount St. Helens and the natural world through educational programming designed to enrich visitors’ appreciation and understanding of the Pacific Northwest’s youngest and most active volcano. For more information on the organization, visit mshinstitute.org.