After being named the Erich and Lea Sternberg Professor, the highest award conferred to faculty by the Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College, art history professor Darius Spieth delivered a lecture about the art market to students and staff at the French House Thursday.
Sternberg professors exemplify both excellence in creativity and research and outstanding moral character. Since arriving at LSU in 2003, Spieth has earned a reputation as one of the most prominent art history scholars in the nation. Holding a doctoral degree in art history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master of business administration from the International University of Japan, Spieth’s work focuses on the interrelationships between art, intellectual history and economics.
Spieth’s most notable publications include historical analyses of Netherlandish art markets in revolutionary Paris, exhibition catalogs describing 18th century Venetian art and a historiography of Giandomenico Tiepolo’s fresco painting, “Il Mondo Nuovo.” He currently serves as LSU’s art history area coordinator and is a three-time recipient of The Mag’s “Best Professor on LSU Campus,” a title awarded based on a popular vote by students.
Each year, Sternberg professors are asked to deliver a lecture in the Hans and Donna Sternberg Salon in the French House. Delivered Thursday, Spieth’s lecture was titled, “Predicting Financial Markets Through the Behavior of Art Buyers (and vice versa).”
Drawing on Spieth’s financial expertise and experience as an art collector, the lecture problematized existing art market indices and offered valuable insight into the market’s volatility. According to Spieth, there is a gap between how art buyers perceive financial crashes’ effects on the art market and how buyers actually behave.
At the end of the lecture, Spieth invited members of the audience to role-play as financial analysts at the art broker, Sotheby’s, in the wake of the 2008 recession. He posed a simple question: in an unstable market, should Sotheby’s stockholders buy more shares or sell them? Spieth argued that because art buyers tend to continue purchasing art even amid macro-level financial crashes, a wise analyst would take advantage of market uncertainty and buy stock while its value was depreciated. Eventually, he said, the market would stabilize, Sotheby’s stock value would rise and the analyst would profit immensely.
After fielding questions from the audience, in true Sternberg lecture tradition, Spieth shared dinner with the audience in the French House lounge. The discussion represented academia at its finest, a healthy mix of pleasantries, jokes and opinions on the preceding lecture.
For Joseph Givens, LSU’s manager of national fellowships and Spieth’s longtime colleague in the art history department, the lecture was a beautiful recognition of Spieth’s contributions to LSU.
“Darius is one of the more prolific professors on campus. He’s in a unique case where he’s probably teaching more students than anyone on campus, yet he’s publishing at a rate that is insane for someone with that kind of teaching load,” Givens said. “He’s both an excellent teacher and an amazing scholar.”
Even more salient for Givens than Spieth’s teaching and academic prowess is his upstanding character.
“The person who has had the most influence on my career is Darius Spieth. He’s stood up for the art that I study even when other people have called it ‘trite garbage,’” Givens said. “He’s the exact opposite of the stereotype of an art history professor. He cares about all kinds of art and all kinds of people.”
