Corita Kent’s art and social practice are central to the art of the 1960s, and it is astonishing that this has only lately been widely recognized. Kent’s art was not just religious in its vocation; it represented a reinvention of theologically meaningful art in a period that could otherwise produce no more than simulations. One exception, however, can be found in the work of Colin McCahon, then unknown outside his native New Zealand. McCahon’s body of paintings from the late 1940s to the early 1980s, which rivals in quality any of his American or European contemporaries, stands apart from them in excavating the buried Christian legacy at the core of Western art.

Thomas Crow, the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art in the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, will examine parallels between Kent and McCahon in this public lecture, presented in conjunction with the special exhibition Corita Kent and the Language of Pop (September 3, 2015–January 3, 2016).

More info: http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/visit/calendar/reinventing-religious-art-in-the-1960s