Art Colloquium: “Bodies Made of Numbers, Numbers Made of Bodies”

Catherine Howe, lecturer in the Art Department, presents “Bodies Made of Numbers, Numbers Made of Bodies,” 4:15 pm, Wednesday, November 7 in Griffin 7. This talk focuses on two sculptures commissioned in 1891 by Dudley Allen Sargent, the director of Harvard University’s physical fitness program. The figures, based on the anthropometric measurements of thousands of college students and on composite photographs, were meant to represent the “average American” man and woman at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Howe suggests that the sculptures derived their authority from their scientific and artistic aura and demonstrates how statistical storytelling was incorporated into sculptural representation.