For our first lecture of the 2023-2024 series, we are excited to welcome noted professor of art history, Greg Levine, to give his first Gardner Center lecture.

In 1892, the San Francisco Bohemian Club constructed a giant statue of a Buddha (modeled after the Daibutsu in Kamakura, Japan) in the forest that would become Muir Woods in 1908. This talk positions the statue in relation to material and visual history, modern transnational Buddhism and visual culture, and race and environment.

Professor and recent Chair (Fall 2020-2023) of the UC Berkeley Department of History of Art, Greg Levine teaches the art and architecture of Japan, Buddhist visual culture, and eco-art history. His current book project is A Tree and A Buddha: Imagining Arboreal Humanism. A projected trilogy on global Buddhist visual cultures comprises Long Strange Journey: On Modern Zen, Zen Art, and Other Predicaments (2017); Buddha Heads: Fragments and Landscapes; and Other Buddhas: White Supremacy and Buddhist Visual Culture. The recipient of a Guggenheim and other fellowships, he is an editorial board member of Artibus Asiae and the Journal of Art Historiography.