New for 2005-06: The Violette de Mazia Foundation is pleased to offer a year-long seminar that will carry on an idea begun by Miss de Mazia to support and enrich participants understanding of and conversancy with the objective approach to art. This seminar is intended as an interactive and participatory forum for the exploration of aesthetic ideas and is designed to foster an enhanced and continuing understanding of the objective method.

The seminar will focus on specific concepts related to the objective method and explore them in depth. Participants will be encouraged to suggest topics for discussion and to lead the group in these discussions. Topics may arise from, but need not be limited to, individual curiosity on a specific subject or theory, or from personal experience such as classroom or studio work.

In addition to these discussions, the group will also apply the objective method to topical subjects such as current exhibits showing at area museums. In addition, the seminar will help educators integrate exhibit educational materials into their classroom teaching through the addition of objective approach source material. Some highlights of the coming year will be Jacob van Ruisdael: Dutch Master of the Landscape at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from October 23, 2005, to February 5, 2006, and Cézanne in Provence at Washington’s National Gallery from January 29, 2006, to May 7, 2006. The National Gallery describes the upcoming Cézanne show as “the principal international exhibition marking 2006 as the centenary of the death of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). This exhibition, by focusing on the works Cézanne painted in and around his native Aix-en-Provence, will celebrate the landscape and the rich associations it had for him.” The exhibit will feature, “approximately 100 of Cézanne's greatest oil paintings and watercolors.”

This seminar is open to all alumni who have successfully and completely fulfilled the requirements for The Foundation Part I and II classes, and any other obligations such as completing work for Part III. The Seminar will meet at 6 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month beginning October 11, 2005. Meetings will be held at The Foundation office in Wayne. Due to limited space, the seminar will be limited to 15 participants chosen on a first-come, first-serve basis.

For further information, please call The Foundation office, 610-971-9960. To register, click here to download a registration form (PDF). Adobe's FREE Acrobat Reader software, which can be downloaded here, is required to open/view the registration form.

Forms must be received by September 30, 2005.