Erma Hermens will be giving a Brown Bag Lunch presentation on Monday, November 3, 2014, from 12 to 1:30pm, at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Her talk is entitled “Technical Art History: Art and Science, a Marriage Made in Heaven?.”

Erma Hermens is the Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in Technical Art History, History of Art Department, University of Glasgow. She received an MA in History of Art from Leiden University, an MA in Italian Language and Literature from Leiden University, and a PhD in Art History from Leiden University. Hermens leads the Technical Art History strand of the Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History at the University of Glasgow, where she also convenes the MLitt program “Making and Meaning: Approaches in Technical Art History.” Her curatorial projects have included Rembrandt and the Passion (Hunterian Art Gallery, September 2012), Bosch and Bruegel: Four Paintings Magnified (Kardiorg Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia, October 2011- March 2012), and Art Detectives: Tracing Bosch and Breugel (Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, November-January 2012-2013). Hermens’s book-length publications include European Paintings 15th-18th Century: Copying, Replicating and Emulating (CATS Proceedings I; London: Archetype Publications, 2013) and On the Trail of Bosch and Bruegel: Four Paintings under Magnification (London: Archetype Publications, 2012). She has organized several international symposia in the interdisciplinary field of technical art history, and she is chief editor of the online edition of ArtMatters: International Journal for Technical Art History, funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

In her talk at the BGC, Hermens will look into the interdisciplinary methodology of technical art history, with its synergy of art and science. The case for this happy union will be made through object-based studies from recent research, combining art history, scientific analyses, art technological source research, and various other strands of investigation. Hermens will discuss new research on an early work by Samuel van Hoogstraten, Christ and the Women of Jerusalem, probably created in Rembrandt’s studio, an environment hugely influential on Van Hoogstraten’s practice and theory. Hermens will also present some examples from a research project (in collaboration with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM, Mexico City) into paintings by the Antwerp painter Maerten de Vos, which, through trade routes with Antwerp travelled to New Spain (presently in in Cuautitlán, Estado de México, and the Cathedral, Mexico City), representing a travel log of materials, techniques and ideas, and are now investigated to confirm or refute their attribution.

Coffee and tea will be served; attendees are welcome to bring their own lunch.

RSVP is required.