Dr. Joseph Koerner, Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, visited Rice campus yesterday for the public screening of his film, “The Burning Child,” and an engaging Q&A afterwards with art history students and the community.
In the 2019 documentary film, Koerner returns to Vienna to discover the vanished interior of his father’s home that was portrayed in a painting his father created from memory depicting the Austrian home he fled during the rise of fascism and anti-Semitism in 1938.
At the center of Koerner’s film is a journey to finding the meaning of home even when radically dislocated and to understand the concepts of safety and sanctuary through interviews with a shoemaker, artists, and historians.
The Department of Art History also invited Dr. Koerner to present at this year’s John and Dominique de Menil Distinguished Seminar. The seminar is an opportunity for visiting scholars to discuss their ongoing work and ideas with the department’s faculty and graduate students and engage in an extended seminar discussion afterwards.
