In celebration of the special exhibition
Poseidon and the Sea: Myth, Cult, and Daily Life, Creighton University and Joslyn Art Museum welcome
Katherine Rinne from the California College of the Arts and author of
The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City. Rinne's talk is the 2014 McCormick Lecture in Art History sponsored by Creighton's Department of Fine and Performing Arts.
Dr. Rinne's lecture,
"Experimenting with Water: Fountain Design in Renaissance and Baroque Rome," begins at 7 pm in Joslyn’s Witherspoon Concert Hall; cash bar available at 6 pm in the Storz Fountain Court.
Visitors to this program who wish to view the special exhibition, Poseidon and the Sea
will be required to obtain an exhibition ticket from the Admissions
Desk. Joslyn Members, Creighton University students and faculty with ID,
and all other college students with ID may receive a free exhibition
ticket. Adult general public visitors will be required to purchase a
ticket at the Museum admissions desk for $5 (special Thursday evening
price). The lecture is free of charge.
THE LECTURE
From source springs to flowing fountains,
KATHERINE RINNE will follow architects and fountain designers as they attempt to understand, control, divert, and display gravity-flow water in public and private fountains and villa gardens in sixteenth and seventeenth century Rome. The designers used traditional practices and in some cases ancient formulae and theoretical knowledge to build fountains. But, because there were so many unanswered questions about how to measure water's volume, velocity, and pressure, their fountain designs—constantly tested and refined while under construction—can also be considered as on-site hydraulic experiments.
This evening will explore some of the ways in which designers participated as unacknowledged, yet active, members of Rome’s scientific community of natural philosophers and engineers, and how the knowledge the designers gained through their experiments often exceeded that of the “scientists.”
THE SPEAKER
Rinne has taught at several universities and specializes in water history and current issues
related to urban development and water scarcity. She is project director for an ongoing web-based research project called
Aquae Urbis Romae: The Waters of the City of Rome that is published by the University of Virginia. The project examines the 3,000-year history of water infrastructure and urban development in Rome. She has been awarded numerous research fellowships for this work, including awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Science Foundation. Her book
The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City (Yale University Press: 2011) received the 2012 Spiro Kostof Award for Urban History from the Society of Architectural Historians and the 2011 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Prize for Landscape History. Prof. Rinne’s professional design work has focused on large-scale urban design and planning projects such as the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics where she was a member of the design team. Her other major projects have included the master plan for the secondary urban center at Kapolei, Hawaii; the Paramount Studios Master Plan; the Master Plan for the Superconducting Super Collider, and the Los Angeles Greenways proposal.
THE ANNUAL MCCORMICK LECTURE IN ART HISTORY, sponsored by Creighton’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts, is given each year by experts in Art History and Archaeology for students at Creighton and the wider Omaha public interested in art, art history, and archaeology.