Please join us on Saturday, September 9 for a special lecture with Professor James Oles, Senior Lecturer in Art at Wellesley College and adjunct curator at the college’s Davis Museum , where he will be giving us the inside story about the museum's recent acquisitions in colonial Latin American art, including an amazing portrait of a woman in late 18th century Lima, Peru, that tradition says once appeared in a Bette Davis film, and a signed religious scene from 17th century Puebla, based on a Flemish print and long "lost" in a private collection in Caracas, Venezuela. (Please see his biography below.)

Event Information 

Date: Saturday September 9

Time: 10am-12pm

Location: The home of Rebecca Nounou  '07 located at  2160 Century Park East, Apt 711 Los Angeles 90067

Parking: Metered parking is available around Roxbury Park two blocks away in addition to several garages.

Cost: $10 for non-members and free for current members.

For questions regarding your Wellesley login or other technical difficulties, please contact Robin Marshall at Wellesley: rmarshal@wellesley.edu.

Join the WCLA or renew your membership today! https://wellesley.omnimagnet.com/losangeles.alum.wellesley.edu/memsub.html. For questions about your membership status, please reach out to bvredeveld@gmail.com & henrietta.w.wong@gmail.com.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Professor James Oles’ Biography

Specialist in Latin American art, focusing on modern Mexican art and architecture, through museum as well as academic projects.

As both scholar and curator, my research focuses on modern Mexican art, from the 1910 Revolution through the 1960s, though I often venture further afield, to places like Argentina or the U.S. Southwest. I am particularly interested in U.S.-Mexican cultural interchange; my first major project was called South of the Border: Mexico in the American Imagination, 1914-1947 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993). In fact, my research interests are pretty diverse, which helped me write a survey covering Mexican art and architecture from the Conquest to today: Art and Architecture in Mexico (Thames & Hudson, 2013).

At Wellesley  my courses focus on the history of Mexico from the ancient through modern eras . As well as teaching students how to look carefully and critically, I want them all to be careful and critical writers, and thus push them hard. One of my proudest achievements is having four former students go on to complete Ph.D.'s in Latin American art.  But I only teach in the spring semester: The rest of the year I live in Mexico City where I work as an independent curator and art historian. I have organized several major exhibitions in the United States and Mexico, and often advise collectors, curators, and visiting scholars on the art world there.  Among several current projects, I am co-curating a major exhibition on the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (opens 2020).