A group of ancient agate eye beads, Western Asia, 3rd to 1st millennium B.C.
Lecture
Monday 11 March
6:30pm ET
450 Park Avenue, New York
RSVP: jewels@phillips.com
The evil eye is an epic story of humanity’s on-going struggles between superstition and reality, religion and science, moderation and excess. Prior to the evil eye, there were fertile eyes, holy eyes and solar eyes. When and why did eye imagery become associated with evil? Belief in an eye of evil has a long history and wide geographic spread. Beginning with Paleolithic times and continuing to the present, Lois S. Dubin, in a visually dynamic lecture, discusses how eye beads and jewelry help document the narrative.
A curator, author and frequent lecturer, Lois Dubin has curated numerous exhibitions and written many books including the best-selling The History of Beads: From 30,000 B.C. to the Present (Abrams, 1987); reissued and updated as The History of Beads: 100,000 B.C. to the Present. (Abrams, 2009). Her recent exhibitions with accompanying books are FLORAL JOURNEY: Native North American Beadwork for the Autry National Center in Los Angeles (March 2014- April 2015) and GLITTERING WORLD: Navajo Jewelry of the Yazzie Family (National Museum of the American Indian-New York (November 2014-January 2016).