September 2, 2011 — The University of Virginia Art Museum will host Carmenita Higginbotham for a special lecture accompanying the museum's new exhibition, "Figure Study: The Fourteenth Street School and the Woman in Public" on Sept. 15.  Higginbotham's lecture, "The Fourteenth Street School: Art, Vision, and the Urban Scene," will be held at 5:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153.

Higginbotham's lecture will center on the Depression-era images created by an eclectic group known as the Fourteenth Street School, and will situate their transformation of urban art against the backdrop of America's shifting social, economic and artistic investments. This 1930s group of artists who lived near Union Square in New York City envisioned a fresh perspective of urbanism. Led by Kenneth Hayes Miller, the painters Isabel Bishop, Raphael Soyer and others redefined the transitional space of the city between the wars.

Higginbotham is assistant professor of American art in the U.Va. College of Arts & Sciences' McIntire Department of Art. Prior to teaching at the University, she completed fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She also participated in exhibition projects in both New York and Washington, D.C., including "Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self," "Carrie Mae Weems: The Hampton Project" and "The Art of Romare Bearden."

This lecture is free and open to the public. For information, call 434-243-2050 or e-mail museumoutreach@virginia.edu. The museum is located at 155 Rugby Road, one block from the Rotunda.