January 22, 2024
Presenting unseen and unpublished light-sheet enhanced images from the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Tai Mitsuji’s paper demonstrates how Édouard Manet’s double-sided drawing, Barricade (1871), produced a historical palimpsest and portrait of both political change and stasis at the end of the Second French Empire and beginning of the Third Republic. It argues that Manet’s composition was itself a barricade, providing structure for the artist during a period of collective political insecurity.
Established in 1791, the Bowdoin Prizes are amongst Harvard’s oldest and most prestigious student awards. They are designed to recognize essays of originality and high literary merit, written in a way that engages both specialists and non-specialists.