2024 Lecture Series, “A Common Place: Harrisonburg and the Shenandoah Valley”

Join the Frontier Culture Museum for our 2024 Lecture Series. The final installment of the 2024 Lecture Series is titled “A Common Place: Harrisonburg and the Shenandoah Valley,” will take place on April 2, 2024 at 7:00 PM. The Lecture Series will take place in the Dairy Barn Lecture Hall and is free and open to the public.

Since the early frontier days of the eighteenth century, Harrisonburg, Virginia has been a vital agricultural, commercial, and political center in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. It was not until the 1950s, however, that it adopted the motto “The City with the Planned Future.” David Ehrenpreis, author of Picturing Harrisonburg: Visions of a Shenandoah Valley City Since 1828 will examine how visions of a place shift over time, revealing a community’s values, how they evolve, and what they mean today.

Meet the Speaker:

David Ehrenpreis is Professor of Art History at James Madison University and has published widely in journals including the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, Woman’s Art Journal, and Art Book. He is author of the book Picturing Harrisonburg: Visions of a Shenandoah Valley City since 1828, which examines the shifting visions of place and community in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The curator of numerous exhibitions including a survey of Chinese artist Xu Bing, his current book project is entitled “Dying for the Nation: Monuments and the Experience of National Memory.”