Linda Docherty

Linda J. Docherty

The Art of Isabella Stewart Gardner 

The Colby College Department of Art is proud to announce that the third James M. Carpenter lecture will be presented by Professor Linda J. Docherty.

Docherty is Associate Professor of Art at Bowdoin College, where she has taught since 1986. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for which she wrote a dissertation entitled “A Search for Identity: American Art Criticism and the Concept of the ‘Native School,’ 1876-1893.” Professor Docherty has been the recipient of many important awards, from the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and has published many essays on subjects ranging from portraiture to collecting, and on artists such as James McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, Edmund C. Tarbell, William Merritt Chase. She also has curated several exhibitions for both the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and at the Ackland Art Museum (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). She is currently working on a book-length study of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum design.

“The Art of Isabella Stewart Gardner”will examine the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as a place in which “to see beautiful things.” Professor Docherty will show how literary as well as visual sources informed Gardner’s public presentation of her art collections. She will discuss further how Gardner’s museum idea evolved in relation to a private spiritual journey.

The Carpenter lecture fund was established by Jacqueline K. Davidson, alumna of Colby College, to honor Professor Carpenter (1914-1992). It is Mrs. Davidson’s goal to recognize Professor Carpenter’s deep and lasting impact on her and on the College, as the founder and first Director of the Museum of Art and the first Chair of the Art Department; he was also the first to hold the Ellerton and Edith Jetté Professorship in Art.

This lecture, which is open to the public and without charge, will be presented in Keyes 105 at 7:30 p.m. on October 24, 2006. Please join us for this important occasion.