Speakers:

Edward Lucie-Smith, art critic, London

Alexander Stille, Columbia University, New Yorker Magazine, New York Times

Karl Galinsky, University of Texas, Austin, Texas

Margaret Malamud, University of New Mexico, Las Cruces

Edward Luttwak, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown, University

Thomas Noble Howe, Herman Brown Professor, Southwestern University

Exhibiting Artists:

Mersad Berber, Bosnia/Zagreb

Francisco Benitez, Santa Fe

Edward Lucie-Smith, London

Francisco Benitez (Santa Fe) has been working extensively in the Pompei area for years and has studied and reinterpreted many aspects of ancient Greek and Roman painting, including encaustic and fresco technique. Benítez has worked as a kind of art historical archaeologist, drawing connections between the remote past and the existential angst of modern culture and civilization. He has studied the “virtual reconstructions” of famous paintings which Romans commissioned for the frescoes of their own houses, and attempts to reproduce the ancient view of painting, by starting with visible and moving to a moral expression of the soul. He will be creating works especially for this symposium.