- This event has passed.
Chesterton House Presents:
Beauty in the Ruins
The Relevance of the Beautiful in a Wounded World
Followed by a panel discussion with Cornell faculty members:
Praveen Sethupathy, Professor of Physiological Genomics; Director of the Center for Vertebrate Genomics
Shuwen Yue, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering
April 25th, 2024
5pm EST
Reception to follow
Physical Sciences Building 120
or remotely via Zoom (Registration Required)
Does beauty matter today? At one time beauty, truth, and goodness stood as the highest universal ideals. But with the scientific and technological turns in culture, beauty has been reduced to benign prettiness. The collapse of the humanities has taken truth and goodness down with it. What if beauty had enduring and urgently needed relevance today? If it could reflect something good and essential in the worlds of science, politics, medicine, education, and mental health? What if beauty actually has the power to help us recover truth and goodness in our struggle against the challenges of our age? Join us as internationally renowned painter and scholar, Bruce Herman, leads us to think about a timely return to beauty–in art and in life. The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with Cornell faculty members Praveen Sethupathy, Professor of Physiological Genomics, and Shuwen Yue, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering.
Bruce Herman; A distinguished painter, writer, and speaker. Former professor and founding chair of the Art Department at Gordon College.
Bruce Herman (American, b. 1953) is a painter, writer, and speaker.
Herman’s art has been shown in more than 150 exhibitions — nationally in many US cities, including New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston — and internationally in England, Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, Canada, and Israel. His artwork is featured in many public and private art collections including the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art in Rome; The Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts print collection; The Grunewald Print Collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; DeCordova Museum in Boston; the Cape Ann Museum; and in many colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada.
Herman taught at Gordon College for nearly four decades, and is the founding chair of the Art Department there. He held the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts for more than fifteen years, and continues to curate exhibitions and manage the College art collection there.
Herman completed both BFA and MFA degrees at Boston University College of Fine Arts under American artists Philip Guston, James Weeks, David Aronson, Reed Kay, and Arthur Polonsky. He was named Boston University College of Fine Arts Distinguished Alumnus of the Year 2006.
Herman’s art may be found in dozens of journals, popular magazines, newspapers, and online art features. He and co-author Walter Hansen wrote the book Through Your Eyes, 2013, Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, a thirty-year retrospective of Herman’s art as seen through the eyes of his most dedicated collector.
