CENTER TWP., Pa. — Penn State Laureate John Champagne will visit Penn State Beaver and give a presentation for the entire campus and the public on April 16.
“Art and Politics: The Case of Corrado Cagli” will be presented at 6 p.m. in the Student Union Building Lodge. The event is free.
Champagne, a professor of English at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, 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.
Champagne uses Cagli’s career as a starting point for engaging his audience in a discussion of art and the contemporary resurgence of fascism at home and abroad. “Do artists have a responsibility to politics?” he asked. “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?”