• Elisa Tamarkin

Theater capacity is limited for this program.


Free and open to the public. Face masks covering nose and mouth (without valves) are required at all times. We strongly recommend that all visitors choose N95, KN95, or surgical masks.


Salience!: Finding the Point in Nineteenth-Century Art

Proof of Vaccination Required

Proof of vaccination—including a booster shot in most cases—is required for entry into the Barbro Osher Theater.

How does a work of art become relevant? Paintings by Winslow Homer and other nineteenth-century American artists invite shifts in both attention and perceptions of importance with enormous social stakes. This talk looks at these paintings as pragmatic works with salience and interest that reveal versions of events that feel apropos of our lives the moment we turn to them.

Elisa Tamarkin is Professor of English at UC Berkeley. Her new book, Apropos of Something: A History of Irrelevance and Relevance, will be published by University of Chicago Press in spring 2022.

Presented by UC Berkeley’s Department of English.

Participants and topics are subject to change; visit Berkeley Arts + Design (artsdesign.berkeley.edu) for the most up-to-date series information.