Learn how Degas’ famous wax sculpture of the Little Dancer when shown in Paris in 1881 helped spark the birth of modern art!
"Degas' Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen Revisited"
Presented by Gregory Hedberg, Ph.D., Director of European Art at Hirschl & Adler Galleries in New York City.
In his lecture, Dr. Gregory Hedberg, who has held senior curatorial positions at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Wadsworth Atheneum and The Frick Collection in New York City, will discuss the mysteries surrounding Degas’ famous sculpture. The Joslyn Art Museum owns the plaster which was used to cast all the Hebrard bronzes of Degas’
Little Dancer, now found in museum collections around the world. Dr. Hedberg will also reveal a newly discovered plaster that records an earlier version of Degas’ famous wax.
The lecture will also explore how in the 1880s, Degas’
Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen influenced many of the leading avant-garde painters in Paris, including Manet, Whistler, Sargent, and particularly Seurat.
Finally, Dr. Hedberg will illustrate how some of the new aesthetic issues raised by Degas with his Little Dancer sculpture found later echoes in several twentieth-century artists.
Pictured: Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, 1881, cast ca. 1920–21; plaster, height: 39 in., 99.06 cm. Gift of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, 1971.271.a-b
GREGORY HEDBERG received his BA in Art History from Princeton University and his PH D in the same subject from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. For 20 years he had a distinguished career in museum work, going from Lecturer and Fellow at The Frick Collection in New York, to Curator of Paintings at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, to Chief Curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. He then left museum work to help found a new art school - The New York Academy of Art in New York City - as its first professional Director. Since 1992 he has been Director of European Art at Hirschl & Adler Galleries in New York City. In 2009, he published Degas’ Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen: The earlier version that helped spark the birth of modern art.
Program is free and open to the public. Lecture begins at 6:30 pm in the
Witherspoon Concert Hall; cash bar opens at 5 pm in the Storz Fountain
Court. For information, contact Joslyn's Director of Adult Programs at
(402) 661-3862 or by email.
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