Vanderbilt Museum of Art Talk

Wednesday, November 13, 2024
4:30pm, 203 Cohen Memorial Hall

Senior Lecturer Jack Crawford, Vanderbilt University
“Style as Substance: Video Art’s Politics of the Self”

Historicizing the lush contemporary video work featured in Gloss: A Measured Response to Recent Video Art, this talk charts a strain of video and art film practice since the eighties that treats style as substance. With sardonic wit, playful exhibitionism, and libidinal adoration, this work deploys popular culture for political self-fashioning.

History of Art and Architecture Reunion Weekend Lecture

Thursday, November 7, 2024
4:10pm, 203 Cohen Memorial Hall

Megan Mick, Professional Landscape Architect, Assistant Professor, Florida State University, Vanderbilt A&S Class of 1998
"The Art and Science of Responsible Design"

The world around us is changing rapidly, and the conventional Western view of humans and the built environment as separate from nature is no longer relevant. The changing climate has led to more frequent natural calamities and social unrest and exposed the vulnerability of our infrastructure. Although sustainable design is generally accepted as an approach that considers people, planet, and profit equally, it is irresponsible to maintain our current development practices using this standard. Ecological principles provide the foundation for an inclusive and responsible design model at all scales, pushing beyond sustainability. Just as humans engage with and respond to their environment, living systems interact, adapt, and respond to one another. Responsible design acknowledges the active engagement of all living things in their environments and accepts responsibility for shaping the built world. It is an approach that is contextual and equitable, considering the well-being of people and the planet as a deeply connected and interwoven system.

Goldberg Lecture

Tuesday, October 22, 2024
4:10pm, 203 Cohen Memorial Hall

Tanya Sheehan, Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art, Colby College
"Public Art, Public Health: Jacob Lawrence and the Murals of Harlem Hospital"

When Jacob Lawrence first painted the free clinic of Harlem Hospital in 1937, Harlem’s largest public healthcare facility was teaming with artists who were hired by the federal government and working under the supervision of Lawrence’s art teacher and mentor, Charles Alston. Although Lawrence was too young to work officially on Alston’s team, significant connections to the murals can be found in his artwork, in the murals themselves, and in their shared participation in a discourse on race, medicine, and health in urban America. In exploring these connections, this talk shows how Black life could and could not be represented on the walls of Harlem Hospital, and how a commitment to the publicness of Black care took shape in Lawrence’s private images.

Goldberg Lecture

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Gail Fenske, Professor, Roger Williams University
"New Perceptual Experiences: Architects, Artists, and the Skyscrapers of New York"

That New York’s skyscrapers projected such a powerful identity for the city that can be ascribed to the perpetual imaging of the city’s skyline, but also to famed designs such as the highly publicized World, Flatiron, Woolworth, Chrysler, and Empire State Buildings.  But by 1910, the Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery had exhibited the skyscraper photographs of Alvin Langdon Coburn and paintings of John Marin, and during the 1920s the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe—making the city the center of the first transatlantic avant-garde.  The photographs of Margaret Bourke-White and Berenice Abbott, the lithographs of Louis Lozowick, and the colorful prints of Winold Reiss, the latter of which explored the night life of Harlem, comprised a cauldron of experimentation in which these artists forged and documented new ways of seeing.  Coburn, Charles Sheeler, and Paul Strand positioned their cameras on skyscraper rooftops and observation balconies.  O’Keeffe set up a studio in the 30th story of the Shelton Hotel and Bourke-White near the top of the Chrysler Building, inviting others to share their views of the city.  All found in the skyscraper’s new spatiality an inspiration for a 20th century American art.

Art For Lunch

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Peter Chesney, NEH Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt University
“Interact with Art: Contemporary Sculpture”

Goldberg Lecture

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Peggy Wang, Associate Professor, Bowdoin College
"Pop and the People: Re-thinking Wang Guangyi's Great Criticism Series”

As Wang Guangyi's Great Criticism series shot to global fame during the 1990s, its popularity both emerged from and contributed to tired tropes of political dissidence. By uncovering new meanings for these works, this talk considers the broader stakes of interpretation in a Western-centered global art world.

Calligraphy in East Asia Symposium

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Yusuke Kusatsu
Symposium, calligraphy demonstration, and reception

This event is cosponsored by the Vanderbilt Global Scholars in Residence Program, Rapid Advancement Microgrant Program, Belmont University, Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Center for Languages, Moore College, and Ms. Momoko Imai.