The Bechtler welcomes Dr. Shahram Khoshbin, Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and a neurologist at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, for the lecture A Neurologist's Portrait of Van Gogh. Khoshbin will analyze Vincent van Gogh's prodigious achievements and life through the study of neurological disorders.

The lecture takes place April 30 at 6 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Auditorium (lower level of the Knight Theater). A cash bar reception for ticketholders begins in the Bechtler lobby at 5 p.m. Tickets are free for museum members, $10 for non-members. NOTE: Seating is at capacity for this lecture but tickets may become available the day of the event. Call 704.353.9200 to inquire.

In his lifetime, Van Gogh (1853-1890) created more than 2,000 paintings and drawings and was a prolific letter writer with missives going at least six pages or longer. According to Khoshbin, the artist's extraordinary productivity typifies hypergraphia (extensive or compulsive writing or production of other graphic materials). Khoshbin asserts that Van Gogh suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy and a personality disorder associated with it, dubbed the Geschwind syndrome, of which hypergraphia is a defining trait.

Dr. Khoshbin graduated from American University in Beirut and Johns Hopkins Medical School. He is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, and a neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Children's Hospital Boston. His research interests include the electrical activity of the brain and the relationship of brain disease and the visual arts. Khoshbin, along with Dr. Joel Katz who also teaches at Harvard Medical School and practices medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is co-director of Training the Eye, a course that teaches clinical diagnosis to medical students using principles of the visual arts.

Artwork: Vincent van Gogh, Landscape at Twilight, 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam