Residents Event Calendar

Our speaker for the January 3rd Women’s Circle Breakfast is James Welu, Director Emeritus of the Worcester Art Museum. His presentation is titled “Vermeer’s Mania for Maps.” No other painter from seventeenth century Holland expressed a greater interest in cartography than Jan Vermeer. His detailed depictions of maps and globes coincide with the great age of exploration and map making. As the leading authority on Vermeer’s use of cartographic material, Jim will demonstrate that all of the maps and globes in Vermeer’s paintings can be identified, though few originals still exist. These cartographic objects and the ways in which Vermeer used them not only add further meaning to his allegorical subjects and scenes of everyday life, they also shed light on Vermeer’s working method, including his possible use of the camera obscura. James Welu joined the staff of the Worcester Art Museum in 1974 as Assistant Curator and went on to serve six years as Chief Curator and 25 years as Director.