Unhistoric Persons

A talk in conversation with The Invention of Truth
Friday, Nov. 15th at 6pm
601Artspace, 88 Eldridge St

601Artspace is delighted to present Unhistoric Persons, a talk by Christopher T. Richards, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Colby College. Richards will put our current exhibition, The Invention of Truth in conversation with his own scholarship on the relationship between truth and fiction in history, vis-a-vis medieval illuminated manuscripts. Richards will compare the histories explored in the exhibition to late-medieval theories of history and his own scholarly work, which tells untold histories of art in queer and feminist modes. His talk will highlight the importance of fiction and artistry to such histories, without undermining their claims to truth.

Dr. Christopher T. Richards is an art historian specializing in medieval art and queer visual cultures. His research considers the intersection of picture theory and the history of sexuality. After working at a number of art museums, Christopher pursued his PhD at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. His dissertation “Picturing Desire and Desiring Pictures,” which he defended last fall, examined the illuminated manuscript tradition of a fourteenth-century French poem called the Ovide moralisé, arguing that its illuminators conceptualized painting as a queer artistic practice. Most recently, Christopher received a Margaret T. McFadden Grant to publish new research on the thirteenth-century illuminated manuscript of the Roman de Silence, a tale of a trans knight. Christopher currently works as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Colby College, where he teaches courses in medieval art history.