Join us for a compelling three-part lecture series presented in conjunction with Dallas Contemporary’s current exhibition, You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry. Each session is facilitated by local Art History professors who delve deeper into the ideas and histories that shape the works on display.

In this first lecture, Dr. Lori Diel will contextualize some of the works in the exhibition through a discussion and consideration of the primacy and sacrality of textiles in the ancient Americas and Latin America.

Lori Boornazian Diel is the L.H. Favrot Professor of Humanities in the Department of Art History at Rice University. Her teaching focuses on the art of ancient and colonial Latin America, while her research considers how visual works created by Aztec artists in the years after the Spanish invasion and imposition of Hispano-Christian rule could be used as tools of persuasion, reconciliation, and identity formation under a colonial system. Her second book, The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late Sixteenth-Century New Spain (2018), was awarded the Roland H. Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. Her most recent book, Aztec Codices: What They Tell Us about Daily Life (2020), uses images from Aztec codices to explain different facets of life in Aztec society. Diel has also published essays that consider specific Aztec pictorial manuscripts as well as the role of women in Aztec history.

Coming up:

Amy Freund, Associate Professor and The Kleinheinz Family Endowment for the Arts and Education Endowed Chair in Art History at SMU, and Tiffany Floyd, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at UNT, will lead subsequent lectures on October 4 and October 11.