In January, the College of Visual Arts in Saint Paul announced that it would be closing its doors after this year's graduation—on June 30. The main reason given was a 21 percent decline in enrollment in 2012. The announcement shocked and saddened many in our arts community—and inspired a keep-the-school-open movement called CVA Action, which is fundraising and negotiating with the CVA leadership at this writing.
    
If you've never visited the feisty little art school on Summit Avenue—alma mater of our Managing Photographer, Bill Kelley, by the way—you have an unusual and interesting opportunity on Thursday, March 14: a lunchtime talk about Caravaggio by art historian Barbara Horlbeck, who's an adjunct professor at CVA—along with a slew of other jobs, initiatives and accomplishments. In fact, Horlbeck is almost as interesting as Caravaggio.

A Two-Fisted Artist
    
The title of Horlbeck's talk, "Caravaggio and the Life of the Streets," suggests a little of the drama of this artist's life. Rapidly and widely famous for a vigorous new style that combined intense light effects with dramatic figure groupings and uncompromising realism, Caravaggio (1571-1610) was also a turbulent bad boy who swaggered about Rome with a sword at his side, eager to brawl. He killed a man in 1606 and fled the city with a price on his head. He got in trouble again in Malta, and a street fight in Naples—probably the result of an attack on him by his enemies--left him badly injured; he died the next year at Porto Ercole, immediate cause unknown. He was 38.

In between bouts and bruises, Caravaggio had time to help invent the Baroque style, infusing religious painting with both vivid drama and a new gravity rooted in realism; he's an important precursor of both Rubens and Rembrandt. Largely forgotten after his death, he was recognized by art historians in the 20th century as having played a pivotal role in the transition from the  glamorous artificiality of Mannerism toward the realism that would hold sway in western art until the 20th century.

A Well-Traveled Lecturer

Barbara Horlbeck's life is colorful in another way—she's transitioned from being a high-level marketing executive for Campbell's Soup Company to founding a nonprofit, Arctic Perspectives, that engaged with Arctic issues ranging from exploration to Inuit art, to becoming an art historian and consultant who teaches, leads study tours, and lectures on an amazingly wide range of topics, from Chinese painting to Caravaggio. Along the way she has participated in the rescue of an Arctic explorer, written white papers for the Canadian government on northern issues, led a trip up the Yangtze with Julie Nixon Eisenhower, and worked as a docent at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

The lecture sounds like it's likely to be a fascinating encounter of personalities—and an opportunity to see and appreciate a fine local institution that may be on its way out or, with luck and support, on its way back.

"Caravaggio and the Life of the Streets"
March 14
12:00 noon--1:15 PM
Room 102
College of Visual Arts
344 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul
$20 (includes lunch)
to register, e mail [email protected]