Schedule

6:00 - 6:45pm  Members' Reception with the speaker
7:00 - 8:00pm  Lecture (seating opens at 6:45)
8:00 - 8:30pm  Book Signing

About the Speaker

Dr. Asen Kirin is associate professor and associate director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens where he teaches courses in the Late Antique, Byzantine and Russian art and architecture.  Although his original training in Sofia and at the University of Moscow was in Slavonic philology, Dr. Kirin pursued the history of art and architecture during his graduate studies in the United States.  He holds an MA from Vanderbilt University and a PhD from Princeton.  He received two fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks/Harvard University.  Dr. Kirin's early publications dealt with Post-Byzantine frescoes and their inscriptions, but recently he has written on the interplay of late Byzantine architecture, mural painting and natural landscape.  His research into the changing perceptions of Byzantine art led him to initiate and curate the exhibition Sacred Art, Secular Context: Objects of Art from the Byzantine Collection of Dumbarton Oaks.  His current interests involve the different ways in which Europeans and Americans engage the ancient and medieval cultural heritage.