W. Bernard Herman Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture

The W. Bernard Herman Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Art History is named after W. Bernard Herman (1911–2011), a graduate from the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School. The W. Bernard Herman Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Art History was established in 2012 and is supported by donations from the Herman family. With it, the Department of Art History is able to bring the finest art history scholars from across the globe to campus for a period of several weeks. While at the University of Toronto, the scholar will teach an intensive course in art, deliver a high-profile public lecture and serve as a resource for faculty and students interested in the scholar's specific area of specialization.

Lecture Abstract: The past is unobservable. We hear or read about it, remember it, look at its remains or retrospectively imagine what it was like. But none of these forms of remembrance restore the past: what we know or imagine about it, we only learn about indirectly from stories, documents, images, and material remains. In this process of reconstructing the past, images play a crucial role: history painting, photography, film, digital reanimation. After a brief overview of these different forms of historical reconstruction, the lecture focuses on some case studies of photography and film – in particular a media practice that has increasingly shaped the way historical archives have been handled in recent decades: the digital re-coloring of historical photographs and films in order to make history “more lively”, “more authentic”, “more tangible”. So are the historically preserved black and white photographs outdated? And do their colored substitutes really bring us closer to the past?