Joan Chesterton, Purdue University North Central professor emerita, will lead a three-part series of visual presentations dedicated to American art, as envisioned by American painters and sculptors, past and present. The three-part series is sponsored by the Purdue North Central Odyssey 2006-07 Arts and Cultural Events Series and the Lubeznik Center for the Arts. All programs will be at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts, 101 W. 2nd St., Michigan City. There is a $3 admission donation for the public, with Lubeznik Center members admitted free.

“Portrait of an American” will be presented on Thursday, May 10 at 7 pm (Chicago time). The program will explore faces and forms from colonial portraits to the elegant John Singer Sargent society paintings. Mary Cassatt’s intimate portraits of mothers and children and Kara Walker’s contemporary, black and white cutouts of the African-American experience will be featured.

“Our American Journey” will be Thursday, May 17 at 7 pm (Chicago time). Chesterton will discuss artists who take their works to places never seen, long remembered or just around the corner. Frederick Remington’s iconic cowboys and Winslow Homer’s powerful views of the Civil War and the sea, the women and children of the countryside, the subject that was to dominate his mature work will be explored.

Chesterton will also focus on the mythic Los Angeles and Hollywood lifestyle as imagined by David Hockney.

Chesterton’s series, “American Visions” will conclude on Thursday, May 24 at 7 pm (Chicago time). The nudes and insightful portraits of often-overlooked American painter Thomas Eakins will be viewed. American artists in the early 20th century who were influenced to develop a new American Modernism by such avant garde artists as Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne as well as works of latter 20th century artists including Donald Judd’s large sculpture will be discussed.

Chesterton has recently presented “Emerging Masters of the 21st Century,” ”Sculpture Then and Now,” “Art in the Sixties-An Explosion of Style,” and “Painters of Silence, Painters of Light: Hopper, O’Keefe and Shahn,” in cooperation with the Lubeznik Center. She has extensive knowledge and experience in art history and education having worked with the Des Moines Art Center and written for and lectured at the Milwaukee Museum of Art. She was director of education at the Dayton Art Institute and has a Master of Arts degree in Literature and Art History from the University of Illinois.

For more information about these and other events contact the Lubeznik Center at 219-874-4900, artinfo@lubeznikcenter.org or visit www.lubeznikcenter.org. Further information about the Odyssey Arts and Cultural Series at Purdue University North Central can be obtained by contacting Judy Jacobi, PNC director of marketing at 1-800-872-1231ext. 5593.