THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
MIDDLEBURY — In conjunction with the Middlebury College Museum of Art’s exhibition “American Faces: A Cultural History of Portraiture and Identity,” evolutionary psychologist Nancy Etcoff will present “Beauty and Self-Image,” on Thursday, April 27, at the Museum. Etcoff, author of “Survival of the Prettiest,” will shed light on a range of behaviors to which human beings are often somewhat surreptitiously committed: devouring fashion magazines, checking one’s image in a mirror, or gazing longingly at objects of desire.
All of these impulses, she has discovered, are rooted in human biology. “To tell people not to take pleasure in beauty is like telling them to stop enjoying food or sex or novelty or love.”
Etcoff is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and directs the Program in Aesthetics and Well-Being at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She did postdoctoral work in cognitive neuroscience at M.I.T. and is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. She has won several awards for her research on sex differences and the brain.
After Etcoff’s talk the Museum will be open until 6:30 p.m. for viewers to visit the exhibition.