Clark Art Hosts Talk on Ruben's Dionysian Environments

07:42AM / Wednesday, February 18, 2026Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Tuesday, Feb. 24 at 5:30 pm, the Clark Art Institute's Research and Academic Program presents a lecture by Jesús Muñoz Morcillo (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology / Michael Ann Holly Fellow) examining Peter Paul Rubens's use of Dionysian and materialistic traditions, focusing on their connection to nature and their impact on environmental depictions.

The talk takes place in the Manton Research Center auditorium.

According to a press release:

It has been said that Rubens's visual references to Dionysian motifs are related to his stay in Rome in the years 1600 to 1608. However, Rubens's compositions of wet, wild, and vibrant environments surrounding Bacchic scenes transcend visual references to plastic archetypes. Indeed, Rubens seems to draw on specific ancient sources, including not only Dionysian descriptions found in authors such as Euripides, Propertius, or Nonnos of Panopolis but also Epicurean natural philosophy. An ecocritical comparison of Rubens's Bacchic motifs with landscape paintings aims to clarify whether his "entanglements" of myth and nature may have stood closer to a materialist tradition than a stoic awareness of the natural world, as is frequently assumed.

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event. For more information, visit events.clarkart.edu.

iBerkshires.com Text Ads

Now's the time...

to harvest value from your home. Click for more details about a HELOC. Insured by NCUA.

www.greylock.org

rk MILES Blding Materials

Are You Ready to Update Your Home? Start With rk MILES. 4 Locations (800)670-7433

www.rkmiles.com

If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.

Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

View Full Story