Friday, August 20 | 6 pm | Free; tickets required | The Farrell Auditorium

Explore the artistic world of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray with Melissa Wolfe, curator of American art.

Beginning with Aestheticism, Wolfe will examine Wilde’s embrace and critique of the mantra “art for art’s sake,” through works in SLAM’s collection by James McNeill Whistler, William Merritt Chase, and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Wolfe will then turn her attention to 1945 Hollywood, where the film adaptation brings Gray’s moral decay from imagination to the silver screen with artist Ivan Albright’s shocking vision of physical decay in his painting Picture of Dorian Gray. Through this fascinating painting, Wolfe will explore the enduring influence of Wilde’s novel, Albright’s place within mid-century Surrealism, and the intersection of art and Hollywood.