Kim Sajet, the newly appointed Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, will be the speaker for this year’s Friends of Art History Guest Lecture. The lecture will take place on April 24th from 5:30 – 7:00 pm in Room 175 of Curtin Hall.
Sajet became the Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum late last year and has since become an active member of Milwaukee’s art scene. Before her move to Milwaukee, Sajet previously served as director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery for 12 years. Sajet holds a BA and an MBA from Melbourne University, an MA in Art History from Bryn Mawr College, and a doctorate in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University.
In her lecture, Sajet will address the relevance of art history and two key questions: If art history is fundamentally the study of visual communication, why has it struggled to communicate its own purpose? What is art history for?
Sajet suggests that the answer lies not in defending old hierarchies or rehearsing inherited canons, but in reimagining the purpose of studying art itself — as a way of creating community and advancing a shared sense of global humanity.
The lecture is free and open to the public; more details can be found here.