Online Talk: Annual Violette de Mazia Lecture with Anjan Chatterjee
Wednesday, April 29, 9:30 – 10:30am
Free for Barnes students and alumni; registration required.
About the Event
Anjan Chatterjee, MD, presents this year’s Violette de Mazia Lecture, “Characterizing Aesthetic Experiences: Can We Approach the Ineffable?”
Aesthetic experiences can be hard to express in words. The neural basis for these experiences emerges from three large-scale systems of our brains—sensory-motor, emotion-valuation, and knowledge-meaning. In this talk, Dr. Chatterjee shares his research and insights into the emotional impacts of aesthetic experiences, such as engaging with art slowly, encountering public art in urban environments, and experiencing art while recovering from psychological trauma.
About the Program
Presented by the Barnes–de Mazia Adult Education Program, the annual Violette de Mazia lecture and reception celebrates the Barnes Foundation’s legacy of adult education and unites generations of students who share a commitment to lifelong learning and the belief in art’s power to ignite human potential. We are proud to announce that in 2025 our adult education program hosted over 2,900 students and awarded 306 scholarships.
The Barnes–de Mazia Adult Education Program and scholarships from the Richard J. Wattenmaker Scholarship Fund are made possible, in part, by generous support from Betsy Z. and Edward E. Cohen. Additional support is provided by the Frederick J. Rosenau Foundation in memory of Lorraine and Ben Alexander.
Special thanks to the Noreika family for their generous support in recognition of Dr. Albert Barnes’s educational mission.
Speaker
Anjan Chatterjee
Anjan Chatterjee, MD, is a professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. He wrote The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art and co-edited Beauty, Brain, and Art: Essays Bringing Neuroaesthetics in Focus. He serves on the boards of the Global Wellness Institute, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and Fringe Arts.
Go Further
The Barnes–de Mazia Certificate Program
This special track offers an immersion in the Barnes Method and an introduction to other interpretive approaches.
The Barnes Collection
See art differently. Explore paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, Van Gogh, and other artists beside African sculpture, metalwork, and decorative arts.
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Our group workshops help medical students and healthcare professionals develop a more empathetic, humanistic approach to patient care.