Larry A. Silver, Farquhar Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for the 2015-2016 academic year. He is one of 13 distinguished scholars selected by the Phi Beta Kappa Society for this program.
 
Visiting Scholars spend two days at a select group of colleges and universities with Phi Beta Kappa chapters. They meet informally with undergraduates, participate in classroom lectures and seminars, and give a major address open to the academic community and general public.
 
Professor Silver will visit eight institutions: McDaniel College, University of Maine, Colorado College, Beloit College, University of Dallas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Wake Forest University, and Grinnell College.
 
He will lecture and hold discussions with students and faculty on topics such as “India Ink: Europe’s Earliest Views of the Subcontinent,” “Dutch Global Horizons,” “New Jerusalem: Rembrandt, Amsterdam, and Religion,” “Marked and Modern: 20th-Century Jewish Artists,” and “Formation of the Habsburg Empire.”
 
Silver is a specialist in painting and graphics of Northern Europe, particularly Germany and the Netherlands, during the era of Renaissance and Reformation.  He has served as president of the College Art Association as well as the Historians of Netherlandish Art. Publications include Rubens, Velázquez, and the King of Spain; The Essential Dürer; Rembrandt’s Faith; Marketing Maximilian; Peasant Scenes and Landscapes; and Hieronymus Bosch.  He has organized a number of print exhibitions, among them Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian and Graven Images, dealing with professional engravers of the 16th-century Netherlands.
 
About The Visiting Scholar Program
The Phi Beta Kappa Society established the Visiting Scholar Program in 1956. Its goal is to enrich the intellectual atmosphere at participating institutions and enable undergraduates to connect with leading scholars in a variety of disciplines. The 2015-2016 Visiting Scholars will speak on over 100 campuses.
About The Phi Beta Kappa Society
Founded on December 5, 1776, The Phi Beta Kappa Society is the nation’s oldest and most-widely known academic honor society. It has chapters at 286 colleges and universities in the United States, 50 alumni associations and more than half a million members around the world. Its mission is to champion education in the liberal arts and sciences, to recognize academic excellence, and to foster freedom of thought and expression. For more information, visit www.pbk.org.