Mary Kisler: Frances Hodgkins - Brushing With Fame & Fortune

Toi Tauranga is excited to host Mary Kisler (Art Historian, former Senior Curator at Auckland Art Gallery, and now Writer) as she gives the 2024 Claudia Jarman Memorial Lecture at the University of Waikato Tauranga Campus.

Mary will explore the work of Frances Hodgkins, titling the kōrero 'Brushing with Fame and Fortune'.

History
Claudia Jarman (nee Pole) (1908-1986) was an art educator with great passion, inspiring two generations of teenagers in Tauranga Moana to practice and appreciate art. Claudia taught art at Tauranga District High School and Tauranga Girls College. She was also involved in the Tauranga Repertory Society, a founding member of the Tauranga Chamber Music Society and the Tauranga Art Society.
Patricia Brooks, a past student of Claudia’s, established the fund in memory of the significant contribution Claudia made to the lives of her students and the Arts in Tauranga. The Claudia Jarman Memorial lecture continues her legacy of contribution and supports the artistic ecology of the region.

Mary Kisler
Art historian, former senior Curator Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and now writer, Mary Kisler MNZM has an MA in Italian and Art History.
From 1991-1992 she had an Italian Government Scholarship and studied in Florence for 7 months, returning in 2016 as the Craig Hugh Smyth Fellow at the Harvard Centre for Renaissance Art, Villa I Tatti, Florence, researching Italian works in New Zealand Public Collections.

Her publications include:

Finding Frances Hodgkins. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2019 (Longlisted for NZ Book Awards, 2020).
Angels & Aristocrats: Early European Art in New Zealand Public Collections. Auckland: Random House, 2010.
Mary Kisler and Sarah Hillary, “Guido Reni – St Sebastian.” In The Agony and the Ecstasy – Guido Reni’s St Sebastians, edited by Piero Boccardo and Xavier F Salomon, 94–97. Milano: Silvana Editoriale; 2007.
"Florence and the Feminine.” In Italian Women and the City, edited by Janet Smarr and Daria Valentini Fairleigh, 62–76. Madison Teaneck: Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2003.

From 2014 to 2019 she worked on the Frances Hodgkins Project at Auckland Art Gallery, producing an exhibition, subsidiary book and co-producing the exhibition catalogue Frances Hodgkins – European Journeys (Massey University Press) and the Frances Hodgkins online catalogue raisonné. She is currently working on two other book projects.