Performing research in the field of Art and Art History took Michael Marlais (left) through library stacks and across the French countryside. Marlais will give the annual Honors Program Lecture 8 p.m. Mar. 2 in McDaniel Lounge.

The lecture, “That’s Part of Your Job?!: On Research in the History of French Art.” is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410-857-2294.

“My aim is to discuss some of the joys, problems, pitfalls, and rewards of research in the field of Art History,” he says.

Marlais is the James M. Gillespie Professor of Art at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he has taught since 1983.

He has researched and written on many aspects of 19th-century French art and criticism and produced the oft-cited book, “Conservative Echoes in Fin-de-Siècle Parisian Art Criticism.” In venues ranging from the Portland Museum of Art in Maine to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Marlais speaks on many topics in American, Modern and 19th-century Art.

He has also served as curator for many exhibitions, including “City, Village and Encampment: An Exhibition of Oriental Carpets, Americans and Paris,” and co-curator for the widely publicized exhibition “Valenciennes, Daubigny, and the Origins of French Landscape Painting.”

Marlais holds two B.A. degrees: one in English Literature and Political Science from St. Mary’s College of California and the other in Art History from California State University. His M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the History of Art were both earned at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

The lecture is sponsored by the McDaniel College Honors Program, a four-year program established by the faculty in 1986 in order to provide a more challenging education for academically talented students.