“On the Dynamics of Movement and Dwelling: Whistler’s Sense of Home” with Dr. Jonathan Shirland

Date

March 26, 2025, at 6:00pm.

Location

Whistler House Museum of Art – Parker Gallery

“On the Dynamics of Movement and Dwelling: Whistler’s Sense of Home” with Dr. Jonathan Shirland, introduced by Executive Director/ President Sara Bogosian

Overview

In “Dynamics of Movement and Dwelling: Whistler’s Sense of Home,” part of the Whistler House’s 200th anniversary celebrations, Dr. Jonathan Shirland will discuss some of the many houses James McNeill Whistler lived in during his life and frame his pioneering modernist aesthetics, interior design schemes and collecting practices through various meanings of the “home” in the 19th century art world. Whistler’s obsessive concern for beauty forged through a fusion of Japanese, French, English, and American visual cultures, and aesthetic transformations of industrial sites and rivers, will be considered in the context of the displacements, dislocations, and desires for rootedness and stability in his home life.

Featured Lecturer

Dr. Jonathan Shirland was born in Canterbury, Kent, he received his master’s and PhD in Art History from University College London. His doctoral work examined constructions of masculinity in British art c.1880-1914. Among his publications are articles in Art History, Visual Culture in Britain, and Aries, a journal which specializes in the academic study of esotericism. He served as the curator of public programs at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and has taught at the University of York and Lasell College. He is also the visual arts director and lead curator for the project Violence Transformed: an art’s and social initiative which uses arts potential to effect social change and transform our environments.

Dr. Shirland is a professor at Bridgewater State University in Humanities and Social Sciences, within the College of Art and Art History. He continues to inspire and educate the next generation of scholars, and his dedication to teaching, combined with his vast experience, makes him a valuable asset to the academic community.

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