John Champagne, Penn State Laureate
LEMONT FURNACE, Pa. — 2018-19 Penn State Laureate John Champagne will present “Art and Politics: The Case of Corrado Cagli” at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus at 12:15 p.m. on Monday, April 15, in Swimmer Hall of the Williams Building.
Champagne will explore the problematic and contradictory relationship between the art of Italian painter, sculptor, and muralist Corrado Cagli and the fascist government that supported him.
“Do artists have a responsibility to politics?” Champagne asks. “What is our obligation to art of the past, and what does history suggest to us about the role art plays in world politics today?”
Champagne is a professor of English at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. His laureate presentation is an expansion of his research for his sixth book, an examination of artistic culture of the Italian fascist years of 1922-45 and the relationship of artistic works to the fascist regime.
An annual honor established in 2008, the Penn State Laureate is a faculty member who travels the Commonwealth to bring greater visibility to the arts, humanities and the University, as well as to his or her own work.