Event

A "Free Lance" and Diplomat: S. G. W. Benjamin and the Promotion of Persian Art for an American Nation

This is a hybrid event. The in-person reception will begin at 4:30 pm.

When the first U.S. diplomat to Iran, S. G. W. Benjamin, returned to the United States in 1885, he urged Americans to study Persian art. Through lectures and publications, he made the case that Persian art was the ideal model for American artists developing a national school of art appropriate for the modern age. Analysis of Benjamin's writing, sketchbooks, and the objects he sold to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reveals that his theories about and sale of Persian art were supported by the new academic disciplines of sociology and anthropology; postbellum doctrines of individualism; and debates over the forms appropriate for a modern American art with the capacity for moral uplift.

The Dina G. Malgeri Modern American Society & Culture Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

Purchasing the $25 seminar subscription gives you advanced access to the seminar papers of all seven seminar series for the current academic year. Subscribe at www.masshist.org/research/seminars. Subscribers for the current year may login to view currently available essays.

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