The Schneider Lecture

2026 Schneider Lecture: Gorgeous Discontent Artist Talk with Lydia Panas

The Schneider Lecture: Gorgeous Discontent, an artist talk with Lydia Panas.

As a visual artist working in photography and video, Panas‘ work has been displayed nationally and internationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Allentown Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago and Zendai MoMA Shanghai, among others.

The Kutztown resident’s still-life works from the series Gorgeous Discontent are currently on display at the Kemerer Museum, while the artist has also partnered with HBMS to release a series of holiday and note cards called The Moravians, featuring five different images captured from HBMS’s artifact collection, with each telling a unique story tied to Bethlehem’s history.

On January 22 at 7 PM, we invite you to join this internationally renowned artist as she discusses the trajectory of her work over the last 30 years, from her early portraiture, conceptual still-life and video work, through her latest project involving cakes and confections.

Funded by the Jones Adult Programming Endowment.

About Lydia Panas

A first-generation American, Lydia Panas was raised between Greece and the United States. Her work looks at identity and what lies below the surface, investigating questions of who we are and what we want to become. Panas’s work is made in the fields, forests and studio of her family farm in Pennsylvania. The connection she feels to this land is the foundation of her work.

Panas’s work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. Her photographs are represented in public and private collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Palm Springs Art Museum, Michener Art Museum, Allentown Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, the Sheldon Museum and the Zendai MoMA Shanghai, among others. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, French Photo, Hyperallergic, Photo District News, Popular Photography, San Francisco Chronicle, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Flavorpill, Wall Street Journal Blog, GEO Wissen, Die Volkskrant, Haaretz and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Panas has received numerous awards and honors, including the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize Exhibit, the Top Fifty Winner for Critical Mass and two Prix Pictet and PDN 30 nominations. She has won First Place Awards at CENTER, London Calling, Conscientious Portfolio Competition and TPS:16. Panas was also a Solo Exhibition Winner at The Print Center, the Joyce Elaine Grant Exhibit and the GoogleWorks Center for the Arts.

Panas, who divides her time between her farm in Kutztown and New York City, has degrees from Boston College, the School of Visual Arts and New York University. She is the recipient of a Whitney Museum Independent Study Fellowship and a CFEVA Fellowship and has published three monographs, The Mark of Abel (Kehrer Verlag 2012), Falling from Grace (Conveyor Arts 2016), and Sleeping Beauty (MW Editions 2021).