Michelangelo will be one of the topics of this year’s J. Bernard Schultz Endowed Art History Lecture at West Virginia University.

J. David Summers, Ph.D., Emeritus William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the History of Art at University of Virginia, will present “Michelangelo and the World” at 5 p.m. April 6 in Bloch Hall at WVU’s Creative Arts Center.

Summers is among the most distinguished art historians of the time. He has been the recipient of two Arthur Kingsley Porter Prizes from the College Art Association and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Summers hold a doctoral degree from Yale University and taught at Bryn Mawr College and University of Pittsburgh before joining the faculty at the University of Virginia. In 1996, Summers was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Summers’ publications, including “Michelangelo and the Language of Art” and “The Judgment of Sense:  Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics” revolutionized society’s understanding of Italian Renaissance art. His creation of the Post-Formalist methodology, discussed in “In Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism,” opened a new approach to the study of world art.

The J. Bernard Schultz Endowed Art History Lecture series was endowed by two patrons in honor of Bernard Schultz, former dean of WVU’s College of Creative Arts and current professor of art history.