October 17, 2005
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—The Mead Art Museum at Amherst College will present a symposium titled “Queens, Queens, Queens & Empresses” from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29, in Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. This event is free and open to the public. This event is part of “The Empress Josephine: Art and Royal Identity,” an international loan show focusing on Napoleon's consort, “the incomparable Josephine,” at the Mead through Sunday, Dec. 18.

The symposium will explore issues of representation, power and patronage of queens and other royal women from several historical periods — Elizabeth I, Catherine and Marie de' Medici, Catherine the Great, Empress Josephine and Empress Eugénie. The scheduled speakers are Georgianna Ziegler, head of reference at the Folger Shakespeare Library, on “Elizabeth I, a Once and Future Queen”; Nicola Courtright, professor of fine arts at Amherst College, on “Medici Florence and the Invention of Queenly Authority in France”; Katia Dianina, assistant professor of Russian at Amherst College, on “The Russian Minerva: Catherine the Great and Her Hermitage Museum”; Carol Solomon Kiefer, curator of European art at the Mead Art Museum, on “The Empress Josephine: Art and Royal Identity”; Alain Pougetoux, curator at the Musée de Malmaison, Malmaison, France, on “Autobiographical Reflections: The Empress Josephine and the Acquisition of Art”; and Alison McQueen, associate professor of art history at McMaster University, Ontario, on “A Jewel of the Imperial Crown: Empress Eugénie's Chapel at Biarritz.”

The symposium has been organized by the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College. Support for the symposium has been provided by Air France, Amherst Arts Series Fund, the Hall and Kate Peterson Fund and the following departments at Amherst College: English, European Studies, Fine Arts, French, History, Russian and Women's and Gender Studies.

The Mead Art Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Thursday evenings until 9 p.m. More information is available on the museum's Website or by calling the Mead Art Museum at 413/542-2335. All events are free and open to the public.

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