In this, the sixth installment of our fall lecture series, Shannon Perich of the Smithsonian Institution and Irfan Essa of the Georgia Institute of Technology each spoke to the future of art in a rapidly expanding digital culture. The speakers addressed the threats and opportunities created by a growing range of capabilities to create, distribute and interact with art. Their commentary was followed by a panel discussion with audience participation.

Ms. Perich is the curator of the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History. Most recently, she curated the current exhibition: Pushing Boundaries: Photography by Robert Weingarten, and authored, The Changing Face of Portrait Photography, From Daguerreotype to Digital. Perich teaches the History of Photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is a contributor to National Public Radio’s website. She is actively pursuing the application of technology to broaden public access to the Museum’s collections and knowledge base.

Prof. Essa is a nationally recognized figure in the fields of Computational Photography, Digital Video Special Effects and Computer Animation. He is an expert on technologies that impact how citizens interact with information. His doctoral research at MIT was in the area of Facial Recognition, Analysis and Synthesis. In addition to his work at Georgia Tech, he is affiliated with Carnegie Mellon, Google Research and the Disney Research Lab. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE.

We are pleased to offer this program as a collaborative event with:
Atlanta Celebrates Photography.