Date: Friday, January 15, 6:30 p.m.

Chapter: Washington, D.C.

Presenter: Tom Hardwick, University of Oxford

Location: Benjamin T. Rome Auditorium of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 1619 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. (Dupont Circle Metro stop)

Lecture is free and open to the public.

This talk will provide a general and wide-ranging discussion of the continuing influence of Pharaonic Egypt on the artistic and intellectual culture of the West. Egyptian motifs have adorned objects ranging from bejeweled princely furniture to plastic knick-knacks, and have been used as shorthand to convey notions ranging from satirical humour to permanence and wisdom. The uses and abuses to which the West has subjected ancient Egypt are revealing. Tom Hardwick studied at the University of Oxford, where he took his BA, Masters and (ongoing) Doctorate. He worked in the Ashmolean Museum refurbishing the Egyptian dynastic gallery. He also worked as an intern in the Brooklyn Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, British Museum, and the Petrie Museum. He was curator of Egyptology at Bolton Museum, 2005-2009, where he was responsible for the largest Egyptian collection in a British local government-run museum. He is currently working in the Wilbour Library at Brooklyn on several research projects and as a volunteer for the museum. His research interests include: Egyptian art, especially that of the Second Intermediate Period and New Kingdom, sculpture, archaism and the use of art as a means of conveying information; Egyptian technology, especially glass, faience, and metalwork; interactions between Egypt, Nubia and the Mediterranean as displayed in the material record; and the history of museums and collections.