Four Paintings, Four Stories, Four Uncharted Points in the History of European Painting (Off-Site)
Harvard Art Museums, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA
The 2026 Annual Henri Zerner Lecture Join us for the Annual Henri Zerner Lecture, which will be held at Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture, across the street from the Harvard Art Museums. Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Stephan Wolohojian, who is the former Landon and Lavinia Clay Curator and head of the Division of European and American Art at the Harvard Art Museums, will deliver this year’s lecture. Museums acquire works of art not only to expand and strengthen their collections, but also to reshape the narratives those collections make possible. The greatest excitement comes with the acquisition of previously unknown or unpublished works, whose emergence can alter established understandings of artistic practice, historical chronology, and cultural context. This lecture examines four paintings that were unknown until their recent acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rather than simply augmenting the historical record, these works invite a fundamental reconsideration of an artist, a period, and the wider cultural world in which they were made. Speaker:Stephan Wolohojian, John Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge, Department of European Paintings, The…