Bruce Herman
Professor Bruce Herman
Fellow of the Center for Christian Studies
2003-2005
Bruce Herman is currently a professor of art at Gordon College, where he serves as the chairman of the Art Department and as the director of the Gallery at the Barrington Center for the Arts. A more complete biography is available below.
Project Overview
In recent years the arts have exhibited a propensity for resorting to shock tactics and trespassing sacred or sexual taboos. This has alienated the average citizen, who often feels too embarrassed to enter a gallery, comment on contemporary concert music or poetry, or attend most contemporary theatre.
Artists, on the other hand, feel ignored, disenfranchised or otherwise devalued in a society that seems to prefer TV, movies and pop-advertising imagery over fine art or good theatre. What can be done to restore a deep sense of vocation to the artist within the church, and a renewed sense of aesthetic understanding to the average churchgoer?
Through a grant from The Lilly Endowment for the Exploration of Theological Vocation, Gordon College's Center for Christian Studies, in cooperation with The Ockenga Institute of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School, sponsored a series of events attempting to address the issues surrounding the gulf between artists and their public, and how both impinge upon matters of Christian community and faith.
Professor Bruce Herman, Chair of the Art Department at Gordon College and fellow of the Center for Christian Studies, initiated a series of six public dialogues on art and faith over a two-year period.
Read a description of Six Dialogues.
About The Artist
Bruce Herman is a painter living and working in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Herman was born in Montclair, New Jersey, on January 13, 1953. He is married to Meg Matthews and has two children, Benjamin and Sarah. He completed both undergraduate and graduate fine arts degrees at Boston University School for the Arts. He studied under Philip Guston, James Weeks, David Aronson and Reed Kay.
He is currently professor of art at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, where he serves as chairman of the Art Department and is director of The Gallery at Barrington Center for the Arts. Professor Herman lectures widely and has had work published in many books, journals and popular magazines.
His artwork has been exhibited in over 50 exhibitions in 11 major cities including Boston, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, St. Paul and Phoenix. His work has been shown in five different countries, including England, Italy, Russia, Canada and Israel.
Herman's paintings, prints and drawings explore the perennial human dilemma-the longing for transcendence and the paradoxical reality of human mortality with all its melancholy, hope and tragicomic truth. Herman also frequently draws on the Bible for images and inspiration, finding in it an inexhaustible reservoir of beauty and meaning.
His work is housed in many public and private collections including the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art in Rome; the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; and the Armand Hammer Museum at the University of California in Los Angeles.