Videos
With the outbreak of COVID- 19, the Guggenheim Museum wanted to increase it’s online programming. The museum invited the Collers to create two timely presentations from their course, The Pulse of Art. The Stony Brook Alumni Association invited the Collers to deliver a presentation to its members based on their Pulse of Art session on The Vaccine Wars: Learning from Smallpox.
Picturing Pandemic Diseases
Guggenheim Museum June 18, 2020
In this engaging talk, Bobbi Coller, Ph.D. and Barry Coller, M.D. describe and discuss works of art related to the onslaught of three major pandemics, placing them in the context of the medical understanding of the disease at the time of the outbreaks.
Reading and Misreading Faces
Guggenheim Museum October 30, 2020
Humans express their emotions through facial expressions and read the emotions of others by recognizing and analyzing the facial expressions of others. The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced the importance of face recognition as we struggled to interpret the faces of others that were partially concealed by masks or other coverings.
The Vaccine Wars: Learning from Smallpox
Stony Brook Alumni Association February 28, 2022
This presentation explores the development of smallpox variolation and the smallpox vaccine and their reception by the public and in art, as a way to understand national acceptance of vaccines and government public health mandates. The past lessons of pandemics serve as guides for future public health actions.