Barker Newhall Lecture Series

The Barker Newhall Lecture Series in Art History brings scholars and critics to Kenyon College for lectures, seminars, panel discussions, and a variety of events with students, faculty, and the local community. This on-going lecture series, sponsored by the Art History Department, honors the first scholar to teach art history at Kenyon College.

These lectures are free and open to the public.

Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, Barker Newhall (1867-1924) descended from two prominent Plymouth Colony families. After receiving a Ph. D. in Classical Studies from the John Hopkins University in 1892, he embarked upon an extended study tour that took him to the University of Munich and to the newly-formed American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where he participated in the first season of excavations at the Argive Heraeum. He then returned to America, where, after a year as master of a private school, he accepted an appointment as Professor of Greek at Kenyon College. One of the first classes he introduced into the curriculum at Kenyon was a course in archaeology and the history of art (1897). Newhall's course became very popular with Kenyon students, surviving the untimely death of its creator, and eventually leading to the formation of a department of Art and Art History.