Through a generous gift to the UNC Arts and Sciences Foundation, William G. Rand established this lecture series in memory of his late wife, Bettie Allison Rand. This funding allows the Department of Art to bring one or more eminent art historians to UNC-CH every other year for residencies of various lengths. While they are in Chapel Hill, these scholars present a series of lectures and interact with undergraduate and graduate art history and studio art students.

Lectures given through 2008 were published by the University of North Carolina Press. For a list of published volumes in the Rand series, and to order, click here.

Recent Rand Lectures

Fall 2011 – Fall 2013: Arrayed in Splendor: Art, Fashion, and Textiles in Early Modern Europe

“Disclosure and Concealment in the Art of Lorenzo Lotto”, Paul Hills, Courtauld Institute of Art

“Brilliant Appearances: Spanish Court Costume and Its Pictorial Representation”, Birgitt Borkopp-Restle, Bern University, Switzerland

“Virtue and Vice: Clothing and Kingship at the Courts of Charles I and Charles II (1625-1685),” Maria Hayward, University of Southampton, UK

“Clothing for a Marriage Made in Heaven: The Role of Textiles in Ecclesiastical Consecration Rites,” Evelin Wetter, Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, Switzerland

“All That Glitters: Cloth of Gold as a Vehicle for Display (1300-1600),” Lisa Monnas, London

“The Clothes, The Palace, The Court: Images of Power in 16th Century Florence,” Roberta Orsi Landini, Florence

“Strange Fashions and Bourgeois Splendour: The Costume Books of Matthaeus and Veit Konrad Schwarz,” Ulinka Rublack, University of Cambridge

“Medieval and Renaissance Tapestries,” Katja Schmitz-von Ledebur, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Fall 2010 – Spring 2011: Works of Memory in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art

“Albrecht Durer as Collector”, Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Kay Forston Chair in European History, University of Texas at Austin

“Acts of Discernment: Gallery Pictures, Knowledge, and Self-Knowledge in the 17th Century and Now”, Lisa Rosenthal, Associate Professor and Chair, Art History Program, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“Memories of Catastrophe: Pieter Bruegel and G. B. Piranesi”, Peter Parshall

Fall 2008: “David to Delacoix: The Rise of Romantic Mythology”
Dorothy Johnson, Roy J. Carver Professor of Art History, University of Iowa

Fall 2006: “Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art”: A Series of Six Lectures:

Claire Farago, Visiting Wiley Professor of Renaissance Art, UNC-CH

Christopher Johns, Vanderbilt University

Elisabeth Fraser, University of South Florida

Carol Mavor, UNC-CH

Lyneise Williams, UNC-CH

Julie Hochstrasser, University of Iowa

Fall 2003: “Painting and Optics from Antiquity to Leonardo da Vinci”
David Summers, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Art History, University of Virginia

Spring 2003: “Painterly Enlightenment: Franz Anton Maulbertsch”
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Princeton University