talks
Grizzly’s first talk–Matt Giel and Alanna Lawley
Ten people can barely fit into Grizzly Grizzly under the best of circumstances. But this month, the space is seriously reduced by an installation of hanging scrolls forming a stagey backdrop with wings.
Jeffrey Eugenides at the Free Library – On keeping yourself in and out of your novel
The big question at the sold out “Evening with Jeffrey Eugenides” at the Free Library Tuesday night was posed mid-way through the Q&A after a marvelous reading by the author from his new novel, The Marriage Plot. The questioner fumbled around with words that didn’t make a coherent question but which Eugenides knew the meaning of: Basically, how autobiographical is Middlesex, his 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning novel whose main character is an intersex individual (hermaphrodite) of Greek descent from Detroit named Cal Stephanides.
Robert A. Pruitt talks of race and utopia at the ICA
Robert A. Pruitt–the artist Robert Pruitt from Houston, TX, and not the inside-the-beltway artist Robert Pruitt from NYC–stopped by the Institute of Contemporary Art Thursday (Oct. 13, 2011) to talk about his art.
ICA’s first salon brings out massive crowd for lecture and discussion
Did you make it to ICA’s first Salon the other night? I was expecting, well, something Gertrude Stein-salon-like, with a group of people, maybe a discussion leader, sitting around, maybe a table. But no, this salon, whose topic was imagery and whose guest speakers included three painters, Dona Nelson, Scott Olson and R.H. Quaytman, was more like a panel discussion with slides, in the auditorium, with an SRO audience of maybe 130 people who sat or stood facing the stage.
Fritz Haeg’s Animal and Edible Estates, a lecture report
About 60 people were in the American Philosophical Society Museum’s Ben Franklin auditorium on a hot, blustery September day for a lecture by Fritz Haeg, creator of Animal Estates and Edible Estates. Haeg is an artist, architect, designer and avid amateur gardener, and his projects involve communities — of people growing their own food on their own front yards; or of animals, where he creates housing for wild animals in cities where once there were many and now there are few or none (eg New York).
The red scare and Adrienne Skye Roberts
Adrienne Skye Roberts‘ reading of her family history, with visual aids, is a magical thing, occupying its own unique space between a performance and a talk. I heard her Swimming Lessons and the Red Scare at the Coral Street Arts House, with about 20 other people, a couple of whom figured in her story. You can hear her Friday, Sept. 23 at Vox Populi if you missed her Coral Street talk (details at the end; a talk for tomorrow night has been cancelled).
Panel discussion on Urbanism at PAFA – today at 2pm
It’s going to be a rainy day–perfect for a panel discussion! Come out for the panel, The Role of Place in Contemporary Art at 2pm today, at PAFA’s historic Frank Furness building. The panel is in conjunction with the exhibit Urbanism, organized by PAFA Curator of Contemporary Art, Julien Robson. Robson will moderate and panelists include two artists in the show, Ben Peterson and Arden Bendler Browning, bloggers Libby and Roberta (ahem), Boston Phoenix critic and blogger Greg Cook, and Mark Harris, Director of the School of Art at the University of Cincinnati. This is meant to be a casual conversation. So ...
White Columns director tells life at UArts
Matthew Higgs was there! When it happened! It changed his life! “It” was Joy Division, the pioneering post-punk band. And the Brit, who is now director of White Columns, the influential alternative space in New York, says his experience as a 14-year-old, from following, hanging out with, and listening to Joy Division even before they were BIG, was LIFE-CHANGING for the working class lad who grew up in Manchester.
Chicago on the last weekend in April: a panel at Art Chicago, a brief visit to the Art Institute of Chicago and airplane reading about Public Space
Twenty years ago, when I had just moved to Chicago, Art Chicago was the only fair in the U.S. devoted to contemporary art, and my introduction to the genre. Now that fairs are so common, it may be hard to remember that Art Basel existed only in its home city and New York had many galleries, but no fairs. Art Chicago was then held at Navy Pier, in a charmless state of decay: endless, dirty, green shag carpets that made it clear that the week before the space had held farm equipment, and the following week would likely exhibit motorcycles. ...
PMA chief Timothy Rub talks of change
Have you risked your life and your ankle crossing the Parkway to get from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to its annex? Do you wonder how the august institution, so slow to change, will embrace the digital era?
