Thursday, February 21, 2013, 7 – 8pm Mary D. Garrard, professor emerita of art history atAmerican University, will present "Art vs.Nature: A Renaissance Competition in the Key of Gender" on Thursday, February 21at 7 p.m. in the College of Arts & Sciences Gallery, Wesley Foundation, 1210 Stanford Drive, on the University of Miami Coral Gables campus. In her provocative book, Brunelleschi's Egg: Nature, Art and Gender in Remaissance Italy, Garrard brings an art historical perspective to the transition that was underway during the Renaissance in the idea of nature -- the physical universe and its operations -- from an organism imbued with a mind or a soul to a "scientific" conception of the world as a machine that lacks intelligence. Taking her examples from the works of the major artists of Florence, Rome, and Venice, such as Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian, Garrard shows that the elevation of male-dominated visual arts and the idea of art and culture as masculine spheres depended upon the representation of nature as a femaleother to be overcome. Professor Garrard is best known for her groundbreaking feminist scholarship that has illuminated art of the Italian Renaissance-Baroque period. Her publications include two books on Artemisia Gentileschi, work that pioneered modern scholarship on a major 17th-century Italian artist.Registration is now closed for this event.