Talks to feature art, fashion, textiles in early Europe

Art, fashion and textiles in early modern Europe are the focus of two upcoming lectures at the Hanes Art Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The speakers will come to campus as part of the Bettie Allison Rand Lecture Series, sponsored by the art department in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. Both will talk in the auditorium of the art center, located on South Columbia Street between Franklin Street and Cameron Avenue.

Paul Hills, a professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, will discuss “Disclosure and Concealment in the Art of Lorenzo Lotto” on Sept. 29 at 8 p.m. Birgitt Borkopp-Restle, a professor at the University of Berne in Switzerland, will discuss “Brilliant Appearances — Spanish Court Costume and its Pictorial Representation” on Nov. 17 at 5:30 p.m.

Hills has written publications about color, Italian Renaissance art, and on the poet and painter David Jones. He has lectured on Renaissance art at international venues, including Harvard University, the Louvre Museum and the National Gallery in London. Lorenzo Lotto, the topic of Hills’ talk, was a 16th century painter who used drapery and clothes both to disclose and conceal.

Borkopp-Restle is director of the Institute for Art History at the University of Bern. From 2005 to 2008, she served as director of the Museum for Applied Art in Cologne, Germany. She has organized exhibitions of textile arts and other kinds of handicrafts.

William G. Rand of Raleigh, a 1952 Carolina alumnus, established the Bettie Allison Rand Lectures in Art History in 1994 in memory of his wife. The endowment allows the art department to bring eminent art historians to UNC.