Jacob A. Riis and Vilhelm Hammershøi were Danes of the same generation who took up the challenge of understanding modernity in radically different ways. Riis left Denmark for America to become the nation's leading advocate for the urban poor. He was a media-savvy journalist who used words and pictures to make a compelling case for reform. Hammershøi, by contrast, was a Copenhagen-based aesthete whose mysterious paintings of bourgeois domestic interiors suggested the psychological experience of modern life. Join two art historians and experts on Riis and Hammershøi, Bonnie Yochelson and Thor Mednick, for an exploration of their work. After their presentations, Ambassador Anne Dorte Riggelson will lead a conversation about Riis and Hammershoi's contrasting lives and perspectives.
Dr. Bonnie Yochelson is the curator of Jacob A. Riis, New York's Other Half Revealed and author of the complete catalog of Riis' photographs that accompanies the exhibition. She has written extensively on photography and teaches in the Photography, Video and Related Media Department in the School of Visual Arts.
