State of the Art: The Creation of Renaissance Venice
Letha Ch'ien
Monday, Mar. 30, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM (PT)
Repeats every Monday until Monday, Apr. 20, 2026
Price: $140.00
135 slots available
The location: a brackish lagoon off the Adriatic coast. The empire: improbable. The art: remarkable. From the glittering golden medieval Basilica San Marco to the brilliantly colored Renaissance oil paintings of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, Venice presented itself as a divinely ordained city, predestined to be an empire. How art constructed the myth of Venice and navigated a highly segregated — the city housed the world’s first ghetto — yet multiethnic society is the subject of this course.Faculty Bio
Letha Ch'ien is a Senior Fellow at Smarthistory: the Center for Public Art History and a freelance art critic for KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle. Until 2025, she was a tenured professor of art history at Sonoma State University.
This is a Livestreamed + Recorded Course
- Classes will stream live on the scheduled day and time
- Classes will also be video recorded
- You must be a current OLLI @Berkeley member to register. Learn about membership, including our fee assistance program.
Schedule Highlights
- Course starts on Monday, March 30, and ends on Monday, April 20
- Classes meet for 4 weeks, 2 hours per session (10–noon)
- All course materials will remain in Member Dashboards through May 31
Member Praise for Letha Ch'ien
One of the best classes I have taken. Absolutely superb lectures. The instructor is highly scholarly and excels in her field and yet rather than speaking above our heads, her lectures were clear and engaging.
Everything worked! Professor Ch'ien was brilliant, charming and overall fantastic!