Speaker Series #6

 

“Inside Job” - Sacred and Stolen:

Confessions of a Museum Director

by Gary Vikan

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

7:00 p.m. in the Barn

"Inside Job" is a lively, audience-engaging talk drawn from two chapters of Gary Vikan's recent memoir, SACRED AND STOLEN: Confessions of a Museum Director. In his talk, Dr. Vikan will explore the comedy and tragedy to two major museum thefts that he had the privilege (or curse) of witnessing at first hand. One involved the disappearance of nearly 150 works, and the other took more than six decades to solve!

Gary Vikan was Director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore from 1994 to 2013; from 1985 to 1994, he was the museum’s Chief Curator and Curator of Medieval art. Before coming to Baltimore, Vikan was Senior Associate at Harvard’s Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. A native of Minnesota, he received his BA from Carleton College and his PhD from Princeton University. An internationally known medieval scholar, Vikan curated a number of critically-acclaimed exhibitions at the Walters.
 

Vikan serves on the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts of the Salzburg Global Seminar; he is a Councilor of the Maryland State Arts Council. He has been an advisor to the Getty Leadership Institute and Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology. He was appointed by President Clinton in 1999 to his Cultural Property Advisory Committee and was knighted by the French Minister of Culture in the Order of Arts and Letters in 2002.
 

Vikan stepped down from the Walters directorship to write, lecture, and teach; and to provide consulting services as Vikan Consulting LLC to cultural non-profits, collectors. His recent books include Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art (2010); Postcards from the Walters (2012); From the Holy Land to Graceland (2012); and SACRED and STOLEN: Confessions of a Museum Director (2016).

 

This Speaker Series event is FREE to the public.

Due to limited seating, please call 301-373-2280 for reservations.

Thanks to The Boeing Company for supporting the Speaker Series at Sotterley for 11 years running.