Friday, November 13, 12 – 12:30pm
S. Neil Fujita. “Thomas Paine on the value of freedom,” from the series Great Ideas of Western Man (Container Corporation of America), 1952. Detail of print advertisement. Private collection. © 2026 S. Neil Fujita
Free with admission
About the Talk
Join us for an in-depth discussion about S. Neil Fujita’s 1952 advertisement “Thomas Paine on the value of freedom” for the Container Corporation of America, led by Avani Sastry, a doctoral candidate in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania. The work is featured in Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America, and the talk takes place in the Roberts Gallery.
Deep Dives are 30-minute discussions held in the Barnes galleries presented in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s history of art graduate program. Deep Dive talks provide new interpretative approaches and intensive focus on individual works in the collection or current exhibition.
S. Neil Fujita. “Thomas Paine on the value of freedom,” from the series Great Ideas of Western Man (Container Corporation of America), 1952. Print advertisement. Private collection. © 2026 S. Neil Fujita
Speaker
Avani Sastry
Sastry is a PhD candidate in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the intersection of politics and spirituality in contemporary Southeast Asian art. In 2024, she completed her master’s degree in art history at the University of Texas at Austin. She has held positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Christie’s, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
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