Event: Public Lectures by Professor Petra ten-Doesschate Chu - Professor Emerita, Seton Hall University, New Jersey, USA
Date: 16 & 17 November 2023
Time: 18:30 (16/11) & 11:00 (17/11)
Venue: Casino Maltese, Valletta (16/11) and University of Malta, Msida Campus (17/11)
On the invitation of the Department of Art and Art History, Prof. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Prof. Emerita from Seton Hall University, New Jersey, USA, will be delivering two public lectures on nineteenth-century Decorative and Fine Arts. Prof. ten-Doesschate Chu is a specialist in nineteenth-century art, and has published widely, including a textbook on nineteenth-century European Art (Prentice Hall/Pearson), several books on the French artist Gustave Courbet, and, most recently, a co-authored book on the Scottish decorative artist and art dealer Daniel Cottier (Yale University Press, 2021). She is the founding co-editor of the open-access journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, currently in its 22nd year of publication.
The topic of the first lecture, taking place at the Casino Maltese in Valletta on Thursday 16 November 2023 at 18:30 will discuss '“What shall we do with our Walls?” The Battle between Decorative and Fine Arts during the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century’. The lecture will discuss how during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, elaborate decorative wall treatments became fashionable in domestic interiors in both Europe and the United States. Easel paintings, a staple of traditional room décors, tended to clash with these treatments and many decorators would ban them from interiors if they could.
This “ٳٱ” between decorative and fine arts had numerous consequences, which are the subject of this lecture. Entrance for members and registered students is free; non-members pay €10. Students are to register by email. Non-members are to send their payment to Casino Maltese on the Club's IBAN: MT70VALL22013000000040020489904 and send proof of payment to via email.
The second lecture will take place at the Arts Lecture Theatre (ALT) at Msida Campus on Friday 17 November 2023 at 11:00. Prof. Chu will discuss ‘Daniel Cottier, An Intercontinental “House Beautiful” Entrepreneur’. Cottier was a Scottish wall and stained glass painter Daniel Cottier, who in 1870, established a one-stop-shop business in three continents that provided everything home owners might need to make their houses beautiful. The talk briefly outlines Cottier’s career before demonstrating how his business was both similar to and different from those of most other decorators.
