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Contemporary Art & Classical Myth, Part I: Myth as Meaning & Myth as Medium

Jennie Hirsh, professor of modern and contemporary art at the Maryland Institute College of Art

Reception 1 - 1:30 pm 

This lecture opens a two-part series on how classical mythology intersects with contemporary art. The talk will illustrate how myth has come to serve not only artists but also critics working in the last half-century. By exploring works by Cy Twombly, Luciano Fabro, Yayoi Kusama, Bracha Ettinger, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, we will see how certain artists have appropriated and, at times, revised classical narratives. "Myth as Meaning" will investigate how these practitioners adapt these timeless stories to address perennial psychological dynamics by illustrating ancient tales in contemporary ways. Taking a less literal approach, "Myth as Medium" looks instead at how the mechanics and themes of certain myths resurface, unwittingly, in given works of art. To that end, we will examine works by Roy Lichtenstein, Tracey Emin, Ghada Amer, and Wim Delvoye to identify mythical practices that not only revive myth's relevance but also underscore what is at stake in assigning mythological meaning to artistic projects. 

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

Highlights of French Painting at the BMA

Chris Boïcos, art historian and director of Paris Art Studies

 1:30 pm and 3:00 pm tour times - tours are 75 minutes each

The BMA is famous for the masterpieces from the Cone collection gifted to the museum in 1949, including such masterworks as Matisse’s Blue Nude (1907) and Large Reclining Nude (1935), Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibémus Quarry (c. 1897), Paul Gauguin’s Vahine no te vi (Woman of the Mango) (1892), and Marie Laurencin’s A Group of Artists (1908). The BMA has the largest collection of Matisse works in the world outside of Russia, lovingly collected by Claribel and Etta Cone during their annual visits to France from 1903 to 1929. Our visit will include highlights from the Cone collection and connect them to earlier masterpieces of French art in the museum by Chardin, Nattier, Fragonard Vigée-Lebrun, Gerôme, and more. We will focus most particularly on French artists’ presentation of women and femininity from the 18th century to the early Modern period.

Members-only, registration required (limited to 35 people - approx 18 per tour), no fee. Register online here: https://www.artseminargroup.org/online-payment/registration

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Caillebotte - Painting Men at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, from October 8th, 2024 to January 19th, 2025

Chris Boïcos, art historian and director of Paris Art Studies

Reception 1 - 1:30 pm 

The exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in autumn 2024 focuses on Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) and his predilection for masculine forms and portraits of men. It seeks to examine this artist's radical modernity through the lens of our changing perspective on 19th-century forms of masculinity.

In a desire to produce a new, authentic form of art, Caillebotte took his subjects from his surroundings (Haussmann's Paris, the country houses around the capital) and his male acquaintances (his brothers, the workers employed by his family, his boating friends). In response to the Realist movement, he introduced new figures into his paintings: an urban worker, a man on a balcony, a sportsman, and even an intimate portrait of a male nude after his bath. In an era when virility and republican fraternity prevailed, but traditional masculinity was also in crisis for the first time, these new, powerful images challenged the established order, both social and sexual. The exhibition, which presents around 70 pieces, includes Caillebotte's most important paintings of people, as well as pastels, sketches, photographs, and documents.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

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Shahzia Sikander

Valerie Fletcher, emeritus senior curator, Hirshhorn Museum

Born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan, Shahzia Sikander enrolled at the National College of Art in 1987. There, she studied under one of the few living artists skilled in the Mughal tradition of miniature painting. She mastered the original meticulous techniques, including grinding minerals for pigments, making specialized paintbrushes, and preparing burnished paper. Determined to bring the long-neglected art into the modern era, Sikander featured contemporary locales and figures in her BFA project in 1991. Two years later, the artist emigrated to the U.S. to earn an MFA at RISD, which was followed by intensive work during a two-year residency at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. 

In this lecture, Valerie Fletcher traces Sikander’s trajectory as she emerged from obscurity and rose to international fame. In 1999, her solo show at the Hirshhorn Museum attracted critical acclaim, which was dimmed by the anti-Muslim backlash after the events of 9/11. Sikander’s iconography subsequently addressed and then moved beyond the ensuing fears and cultural misunderstandings. Receiving a MacArthur “genius” award in 2006 enabled the artist to expand into other media, notably murals, mosaics, and video. The retrospective exhibition in 2016 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Houston Museum cemented her reputation as a pioneering transnational artist.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

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Four Protest Songs That Changed America

Anna Harwell Celenza, professor - Johns Hopkins University

Reception 1 - 1:30 pm

Pete Seeger once said: “The right song at the right time can change history.” This talk takes that idea to heart and explores the intersections of politics, race, economics, and gender in four American songs: Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1962), Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” (1964), Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On" (1971) and Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman” (1972). Using the roots of American folk music as a key to defining the power of these songs, Prof. Celenza reveals how popular music became synonymous with protest as the Civil Rights era merged with Vietnam. These were years when sharing the troubles of real people through song found a role in America’s expanding music industry. And as recent historical events have revealed, the messages of these songs continue to echo across American society. 

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

Members’ Day Trip: Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment at the NGA and a visit to the Hirshhorn for Revolutions and Osgemeos

Bus pick up/drop off from The Central Presbyterian Church, 7308 York Road, Towson

Join us for a day trip to DC focusing on the prized exhibition Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment at the National Gallery of Art with a visit to the Hirshhorn for a survey of the collection from 1860-1960 in celebration of the museum’s 50th anniversary and Brazilian contemporary art by Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo. Charter bus service will be provided.

This day trip begins with a half-hour overview of the exhibition at the West Building Lecture Hall with curator Jennifer Riddell (general seating, first come first served). Discover the origins of the French art movement in a new look at the radical 1874 exhibition considered the birth of modern painting. A remarkable presentation of 130 works on view at the National Gallery of Art includes a rare reunion of many of the paintings first featured in that now-legendary exhibition. Revisit beloved paintings by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir and meet their lesser-known contemporaries. See the art norms they were rebelling against and learn what political and social shifts sparked their new approach to art. This is a unique chance to immerse yourself in the dynamic Parisian art scene of 1874 - the NGA is the only American stop for this historic touring exhibition.

Following lunch on own at the NGA, members are invited to visit the Hirshhorn for Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960, and OSGEMEOS: Endless Story. Revolutions is a major survey of artwork made during a transformative period characterized by new currents in science and philosophy and ever-increasing mechanization. Revolutions captures shifting cultural landscapes through the largely chronological presentation. In its first rotation, the installation presents 208 artworks in the museum’s permanent collection by 117 artists—including Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, Lee Krasner, Wifredo Lam, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock - made during 100 turbulent and energetic years. The exhibition includes contemporary work by 19 artists, such as Torkwase Dyson, Rashid Johnson, Annette Lemieux, Dyani White Hawk, and Flora Yukhnovich, whose practices demonstrate how many revolutionary ideas and approaches that arose during these 100 years remain critical.

With OSGEMEOS: Endless Story, The Hirshhorn Museum presents the first US museum survey and largest US exhibition of work by identical twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo (b. São Paulo, Brazil, 1974), known globally as OSGEMEOS - Portuguese for “the twins.” The yearlong, full-floor presentation brings together approximately 1,000 artworks, photographs, and archival materials to highlight the trajectory of their collaborative, multidisciplinary practice, including the roots of their fantastical artistic language inspired by their upbringing in urban Brazil.

Members-only, registration required (limited to 50 people); $60 trip fee. Register online here: https://www.artseminargroup.org/online-payment/registration

ONLINE PROGRAM

Rethinking Italian Renaissance Art - Part II: The Evolving Cinquecento

Kerr Houston, professor of art history, theory and criticism, Maryland Institute College of Art

Concentrating on specific examples, this lecture will detail how our shared understanding of Italian art of the 1500s has evolved in recent decades. For instance, scholars drawing on reception theory and somaesthetic learning have stressed the importance of embodied looking and offered exciting new ways of thinking about Cellini’s Perseus and the devotional works at the Sacro Monte di Varallo. Art historians have also stressed the relationship between art, systems of exchange, the age of exploration, and colonialism - themes central to the Walters Art Museum’s 2012 exhibit Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe and Jill Burke’s studies of the Renaissance nude. We will consider re-readings of Giorgio Vasari’s Vite, including attempts to situate his writings in relation to literary tropes and cultural norms - and a radical suggestion involving Vasari as an author. This lecture will end by trying to imagine how the field of Renaissance art history may continue to develop in the coming years.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

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Rethinking Italian Renaissance Art - Part I: Old Masters, New Lenses

Kerr Houston, professor of art history, theory and criticism, Maryland Institute College of Art

Reception 10:30 - 11:00 am

Between 1300 and 1600, Italian artists produced some of the most celebrated works in the history of art. In recent decades, however, art historians have offered a range of compelling new ways of thinking about these old favorites. Drawing on feminist theory, reception theory, queer studies, and critical race theory, scholars have enriched our understanding of how Italian art was conceived and received in its time - and of what it means to us today. We will discuss examples by Giotto, Donatello, Pollaiuolo, Michelangelo, and lesser-known works.

Following an overview of the most influential early art historical approaches to the Italian Renaissance, the first lecture in the series will turn to the methodological ideas that have re-shaped the field over the past generation. We’ll consider the recent material turn, focusing on a provocative re-reading of Giotto’s canonical Scrovegni Chapel, frescoes by Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, and we’ll look at recent analyses of the associations of cast bronzes and woven carpets in a range of Renaissance contexts. We’ll also investigate the impact of queer theory in exploring several revisionist studies of gender and sexuality in Renaissance Italy including Adrian Randolph’s work on Donatello’s enigmatic David. In sum, this lecture will offer a detailed sense of how evolving scholarly interests and angles of analysis have shed new light on the work of some of the best-known artists of the Trecento and the Quattrocento.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

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Conversation with a Stranger: The Photo-Book-Museums of Dayanita Singh

Rebecca M. Brown, professor, history of art, Johns Hopkins University

Reception 1 - 1:30 pm

Photographs harbor within them multiple moments - the time of the shutter opening, attentiveness to the subject’s pose, the care of developing and selecting, and the arrangement in albums or on shelves with other photos and other objects. They also speak to us in our moment: in the words of contemporary artist Dayanita Singh, they are a "conversation with a stranger in the future." Singh's photographic practice emerges in and through the photo book form in all its variety: in printed books, in little accordion-fold booklets nested in boxes or kept in the pockets of custom-made garments, in teak boxes with windows for curating your own mini-museum, or in tall towers of photos that surround a place to sit and talk. Singh has explored the life and loves of a dear friend, India’s haunting industrial spaces, archives and government offices, the daily lives of families in Kolkata, and many more subjects. She photographs with care and attentiveness over a long period, later bringing these images into dialogue with one another and with us, creating a conversation that we, future strangers, might someday join. The lecture will include seeing some of her book objects in person. 

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

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Mark Rothko and the Spiritual in Art

David Gariff, art historian and senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art

Reception 1 - 1:30 pm

The most daring development in modern art in the first half of the 20th century was the step into abstraction - the decision to make paintings that were no longer pictures of the visible world but simply paintings. Abstraction elicited both excitement and anxiety (“What is to replace the object?”). Painters looked to new sources for the kind of structure that observation once provided: to music (seen as the very model of an abstract art form), the logic of geometry, the forces of emotion and spirituality, the material facts of paint and canvas, and scientific developments that revealed new ways to “see” the world, from X-rays to Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Artists from several countries hoped that abstraction might become a lingua franca, transcending cultural differences. While that did not quite happen, the energies unleashed by abstraction and the search for the spiritual in art were far-reaching. Art historian David Gariff discusses the complex relationship between art and spirituality through the works of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and their European counterparts Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

Members' Day Trip: Kreeger + Katzen with Kristen Hileman

Kristen Hileman, independent curator

Bus pick up/drop off from The Central Presbyterian Church, 7308 York Road, Towson

Join independent curator Kristen Hileman for tours of two contemporary exhibitions she has organized for Washington venues and a day brimming with painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture. Charter bus service will be provided. Our first stop is the private Kreeger Museum in upper Northwest Washington. Hileman has gathered the work of 14 artists from our region, but originally hailing from 9 different countries, to celebrate the Kreeger’s 30th anniversary. These works represent a variety of ways that today’s artists take inspiration from the natural world. At the same time, they speak to the stunning natural imagery in the Kreeger’s significant collection of European Impressionist and Modernist painting, as well as the harmony between the Kreeger’s gorgeous landscape and its celebrated Philip Johnson-designed building.

A seated lunch will take place at Al Dente – included in the trip fee. After lunch, we’ll continue to the Katzen Art Museum at American University to see Hileman’s retrospective exhibition of Baltimore photographer Connie Imboden, well-known for her radiant underwater images of models. Imboden’s haunting and art historically inspired figurative compositions were the subject of a past ASG lecture. In addition to teaching and making photographs over her five-decade career, Imboden founded Baltimore’s Baker Artist Awards. This is the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date.

Members-only, registration required (limited to 25 people); $150 trip fee (includes lunch). Register online here: https://www.artseminargroup.org/online-payment/registration

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Mark Rothko and the New York School
David Gariff, art historian and senior lecturer, National Gallery of Art

Reception 12:45 - 1:30 pm

The creative and innovative developments in New York in the 1940s gave birth to a new style of modern painting that came to be known as Abstract Expressionism. The artists of this New York School included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko, among others. National Gallery senior lecturer David Gariff, discusses the art of Mark Rothko against the backdrop of the New York School of abstract painting.

Join us for Guest Day! All subscribers and guests are welcome to attend free of charge! If attending in person, please join us for a reception with light refreshments from 12:45 - 1:30 pm prior to the program.

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On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981, 109min.) 

Christopher Llewellyn Reed, chair, film & moving image department, Stevenson University

A guaranteed tear-jerker and one of her most popular films, On Golden Pond, is a must-watch for Fonda fans, in part because it marks the first and last screen pairing with her father Henry, who finally won his only Best Actor Oscar in this, his final role. (It won another for co-star Katharine Hepburn, as well.) Although Jane plays a supporting role, the film showcases both her formidable acting talents and her well-toned physique: in a famous scene involving a backflip, Fonda's chiseled body served as a brilliant advertisement for her soon-to-debut workout video. Fonda the elder and Hepburn play Norman and Ethel Thayer, the long-married parents of troubled daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda), who asks them to babysit her new fiancé's son while the happy couple jets off to Europe. Despite initial friction between the couple and their adolescent charge, all involved learn genuine life lessons and emerge changed by the experience—and the audience emerges from the film with well-earned tear-stained hankies. Screenwriter Ernest Thompson (who also won an Oscar) adapted his eponymous 1979 play for the screen. Dabney Coleman (the villain in the first film of our series, 9 to 5) plays the fiancé with gentle aplomb. The tension between Norman and Chelsea is an obvious mirror of Henry and Jane's own fraught relationship, and the scenes between them shine with bittersweet authenticity.

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)

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The Electric Horseman (Sydney Pollack, 1979, 121min.) 

Christopher Llewellyn Reed, chair, film & moving image department, Stevenson University

In this thoroughly charming reunion between real-life longtime friends Fonda and Robert Redford (her co-star in 1966's The Chase and 1967's Barefoot in the Park), Redford plays a washed-up rodeo cowboy, Norman "Sonny" Steele. Steele makes off with a prized horse whose condition reminds him of his own sorry state. Fonda is the television reporter who decides to train her lens on Redford's act of folly to further her career, only to fall in love along the way, both with the man and his mission. Directed by Sydney Pollack (Three Days of the Condor, 1975), the film is part ode to the American West and part modern romance, buoyed by the wonderful central performances and the gorgeous images (courtesy of cinematographer Owen Roizman). An added bonus is the appearance of country music star Willie Nelson in his first film role.

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)

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Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978, 127min.) 

Linda DeLibero, senior lecturer and special advocate for alumni and outreach, and former director of the JHU film and media studies program

Coming Home was Jane Fonda's passion project, a story she struggled to bring to the screen for nearly a decade. As a relentless champion of Vietnam veterans' rights (even as many of them regarded her as the traitorous "Hanoi Jane"), Fonda was adamant that a film focused on the personal travails of a paraplegic vet returning to "normal" life was vital to changing the course of the war. Her hero, Luke Martin, was partly based on Ron Kovic, whom she befriended long before Oliver Stone directed Kovic's autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July, in 1989. Indeed, convincing studio heads to finance an antiwar movie in the early '70s proved impossible. Still, Fonda persisted. When director Hal Ashby—in the middle of his phenomenal streak of award-winning movies—finally agreed to take on the film, the war was over, but the final product still stands as one of the great Vietnam War movies and a great anti-war film for all time. In addition to Jon Voigt's sensitive performance as Luke—amidst a rich in veterans—Jane Fonda's Sally Hyde, as the wife of Bruce Dern's disillusioned Marine captain, convincingly portrays a journey traveled by many women in the 1960s: from meekly subservient housewife to fully realized woman, aware of all the life-altering changes around her. For this, she won both her second Best Actress Oscar and lasting respect for bringing this very personal war story to the screen. 

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)

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Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977, 117min.)

Linda DeLibero, senior lecturer and special advocate for alumni and outreach, and former director of the JHU film and media studies program

Not long after Lillian Hellman's death, literary sleuths verified what many observers had long suspected: that the narrative in "Julia," a chapter from the playwright's 1973 best-selling memoir Pentimento, was false. Hellman had coopted the story of a living woman she didn't personally know, inventing her friendship with the eponymous Resistance fighter out of whole cloth. Likewise, her own role in aiding Julia's cause was a lie. Perhaps this is why the film based on that vexed material is an unjustly neglected gem, unjust because even as a fiction (perhaps because it is a fiction), the movie positively glows with a multitude of treasures: superb performances by Jason Robards as Hellman's lover, Dashiell Hammett, and a luminous Vanessa Redgrave as Julia (both Robards and Redgrave won Oscars); Meryl Streep's first screen role as Hellman's viperish nemesis; a brilliant edge-of-your-seat episode involving Hellman's dangerous journey through Nazi Germany; Douglas Slocombe's richly evocative cinematography; and of course, a gripping performance by Jane Fonda herself as Hellman. Most of all, the film was ground-breaking in its portrayal of a phenomenon that is still all too rare in Hollywood film: the story of a deep and vital friendship between two women, as nuanced and loving as any that's graced the screen, true story or not. 

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)

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Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971, 114min.) 

Linda DeLibero, senior lecturer and special advocate for alumni and outreach, and former director of the JHU film and media studies program

After nearly a decade in film, Fonda's performance in 1969's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? finally earned her a reputation as a serious actress. In her next movie, Klute, her interpretation of call girl Bree Daniels cemented that reputation with what is arguably the best performance of her career. (She won her first Best Actress Oscar for her efforts.) Ostensibly a neo-noir thriller about a small-town private investigator tracking his best friend's killer in the big city, Klute is a landmark film of the 1970s, the first in director Alan Pakula's so-called paranoia trilogy (along with The Parallax View and All the President's Men). All are deep dives into the dark side of American power, here made starkly visual with the shadowy, hard-edged cinematography of the legendary Gordon Willis. Although the movie bears the name of Donald Sutherland's impassive detective, Klute is all about Bree, whose thwarted attempts to leave "the life" in New York and pursue a "normal" relationship with Sutherland reveal the terrible price women pay for a sense of freedom and autonomy. Released at the height of feminism's second wave, the film struck a nerve and was greeted with near-universal acclaim. Fonda's Bree Daniels, with her inimitable shag haircut and thigh-high boots, is one for the ages: tough, intelligent, self-aware, and heartbreakingly vulnerable, she is as fiercely complex as the woman who plays her.  

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)

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9 to 5 (Colin Higgins, 1980, 109 min.) 

Christopher Llewellyn Reed, chair, film & moving image department, Stevenson University

Directed by Colin Higgins (Silver Streak, 1976) and co-written by Higgins and Patricia Resnick, this landmark portrayal of women in the workplace is based on an idea by Fonda herself. The story of three female office workers battling a sexist manager would inspire a national conversation about misogyny and later spawn an eponymous sitcom. The #2 film at the 1980 US box office, the movie showed that stories centered on women could score big. Starring Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton in her first feature role (Parton also contributed the catchy, Oscar-nominated theme song), 9 to 5 is a comic romp with bite, never letting us forget that no matter how hard we laugh, the underlying issues are serious. Dabney Coleman is the perfect foil as the world's worst boss. 

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)

ONLINE PROGRAM

MoMA Collection: Interrelationship of Photography and Fine Arts in Modern Art

Sylvia Laudien-Meo, independent art historian

Since its recent reopening in October 2019, MoMA's curators decided to mix up the works of their various departments throughout the galleries to open up some interesting conversations between mediums. Photography and Fine Arts informed each other strongly since the mid 19th C, whether as inspiration or counterbalance, and some artists worked in both mediums. Soviet and Bauhaus artists introduced photo collages, and Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg were among the first to use silkscreen photography. The comparisons open interesting perspectives.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

ONLINE PROGRAM

Hidden, Forgotten, and Off-Radar Art Throughout the Big City

Sylvia Laudien-Meo, independent art historian

New York is not only a metropolis with major sights and collections but also a city with a complex layer of history and an incredible wealth of arts and culture. Exploring the city for decades with the eyes and passion of an art historian and tour guide, I learned about many curious, magnificent, hidden, remixed, dispersed, forgotten, or no longer mentioned fantastic art. Especially some of our older buildings have the most curious sculptural detail and hidden messages, some incredible treasures are accessible but not very well known, some of the past temporary Public Art Projects still survive, and some artworks might not register to you as such, even as you're walking by them. My personal highlights are brought together for a virtual tour that will take us through NYC, old and new.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

ONLINE PROGRAM (90 minute program)

Venice Biennale 2024 - Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere 

Kerr Houston, professor of art history, theory and criticism, Maryland Institute College of Art

Not planning a trip to Venice this year? No worries: join Kerr Houston for a virtual overview of the 2024 Biennale, the largest and most celebrated exhibition of contemporary art in the world. This year's Biennale, on view through November, features an international exhibition curated by Adriano Pedrosa and more than a hundred additional national pavilions and collateral events. Professor Houston, who will be in Venice for the month of June, will collect highlights and offer reactions in a lecture developed specifically for the Art Seminar Group. We'll explore the colorfully queer beadwork of Jeffrey Gibson, a stunning installation by the Mataaaho Collective, the tender paintings of MICA graduate Louis Fratino, and look at some of the more striking artistic and curatorial decisions on display. At the same time, we'll consider a few overarching themes and some of the various controversies swirling around this year's show. We hope you can join us! 

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

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Considering the Nonhuman: Plants and Animals in Contemporary Art 
Paula Burleigh, assistant professor of art history, Allegheny College, and director of the Allegheny Art Gallery
(Reception 1- 1:30 pm)

This talk highlights contemporary artists whose work engages with non-human animals and plants. In various fields of critical theory, the twenty-first century has witnessed a so-called "nonhuman turn," or a shift toward decentering a Humanist worldview in favor of a more capacious outlook that regards humans as participants in a non-hierarchical network of exchange with other species, including flora and fauna. This shift is partly catalyzed by the recognition that we live through the Anthropocene, an era of human-generated climate change. Consequently, artists increasingly respond to an ethical imperative to consider non-human subjects with empathy as we come to understand the scope of our impact on and entanglements with plants and animals. While there is a long and rich history of artistic representation of plants and animals in art, historically, artists instrumentalized both as symbols for human attributes. This lecture explores artworks that depart from established conventions for representing non-human species in order to approach their subjects with sustained curiosity and attention, and sometimes even collaboration. 

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

MEMBERS’ PROGRAM

Members' Program: Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum
Dare Turner (Yurok Tribe), Curator of Indigenous Art at the Brooklyn Museum and former BMA Assistant Curator of Indigenous Art of the Americas; 
Leila Grothe, BMA Associate Curator of Contemporary Art; 
and Elise Boulanger (Citizen of the Osage Nation), BMA Curatorial Research Assistant

Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum, an initiative including a series of nine distinct solo and thematic exhibitions, centers the work, experiences, and voices of Native artists. Preoccupied explores the vital cultural contributions of Native people through the presentation of historical objects and works created by a breadth of contemporary makers. Unfolding over the course of ten months, the initiative features focus solo presentations from Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota), Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French), Nicholas Galanin (Lingít and Unangax̂), Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), and Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations); a film series curated by Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians); and thematic explorations titled Enduring Buffalo, Illustrating Agency, and Finding Home. 

Developed with guidance from the Native community and cultural leaders in and around Baltimore, the initiative also includes interpretative interventions in the display and labeling of certain objects across the museum's collection galleries, a publication designed with guidance from Native methodologies, and a broad array of public programs. Preoccupied significantly increases the presence of Native artists in the BMA's galleries and actively subverts the colonialist tendencies and hierarchies upon which museums have been built. The initiative will continue through January 2025. 

Members-only; no fee, registration required. Register online here or via the button below.

ONLINE PROGRAM

Women in and of Surrealism 

Paula Burleigh, assistant professor of art history, Allegheny College, and director of the Allegheny Art Gallery

Curator Cecilia Alemani titled the 2022 Venice Biennale The Milk of Dreams, a phrase taken from an illustrated children's book by artist Leonora Carrington (1917 - 2001, Clayton-le-Woods, UK). Carrington was effectively the patron saint of the 59th Biennale, an exhibition that boasted unprecedented gender representation statistics: nearly 90 percent of the participating artists identified as women or non-binary. In a relatively unusual gesture for a contemporary Biennale, Alemani included several historical galleries, one of which explored the contributions of women artists—like Carrington—associated with historical Surrealism beginning in the first half of the twentieth century. Alemani's Biennale was a high-profile example of a widespread, recent resurgence of interest in women's contributions to Surrealism, a movement founded in 1924 by the French writer and artist André Breton. Women occupied a particularly fraught position within the inner circle of Surrealism, given the movement's explorations of repressed desire and sexuality, which often led to objectifying representations of women's bodies. Yet women associated with the movement, such as Remedios Varo, Toyen, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and others, made wildly inventive artworks investigating inter-species relations, myth, magic, and the occult themes that feel more relevant than ever in contemporary art and cultural context. This lecture explores the work of key women associated with historical Surrealism and traces their influence on today's art world.  

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN CANCELLED AND WILL BE RESCHEDULED AT A LATER DATE

HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

Tabula Rasa: the Music of Arvo Pärt

Judah Adashi, composer and composition faculty at Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, artistic director, Evolution Contemporary Music Series & Rise Bmore

(Reception 1- 1:30 pm)

Dr. Judah Adashi, a composer on the faculty of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, returns to the Art Seminar Group to discuss the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935). Pärt is best known for his signature "tintinnabuli" style, developed in the early 1970s. The surface simplicity of this musical language marked a radical departure from dominant approaches to composition in late 20th-century European music. We will explore some of Pärt's major works and consider why he is one of the most-performed living composers in the world.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

Keys to the Past: Exploring the History of Jazz Piano - A Concert and Seminar

Quentin Walston, pianist, composer, educator

(Reception 1- 1:30 pm)

Pianist and music educator Quentin Walston takes listeners through a musical history of Jazz Piano. Walston lectures and performs the nuances of the genre's development, from the 1900s ragtime style to the contemporary modal approaches of the 1960s and 1970s. Walston will cover pianists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, Bill Evans, and more, giving participants an understanding of the historical and musical aspects of each creative giant of jazz. Q & A will follow the lecture.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

Members' Day Trip: Whitney Biennial: Even Better Than the Real Thing with a visit to Dia Chelsea, Chelsea art galleries, and public art on the High Line
Bus pick up/drop off in the Central Presbyterian Church lot (7308 York Rd @ Stevenson Ln)
Whitney teaching fellows, TBA

Join ASG on a guided tour of the eighty-first edition of the Whitney Biennial—the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States. This exhibition features seventy-one artists and collectives grappling with today's pressing issues - a 'dissonant chorus' of distinct voices that collectively probe cracks in the unfolding moment. The exhibition's subtitle, Even Better Than the Real Thing, acknowledges that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is complicating our understanding of what is real, and rhetoric around gender and authenticity is being used politically and legally to perpetuate transphobia and restrict bodily autonomy. These developments are part of a long history of deeming marginalized people as subhuman—less than real. Artists in this biennial explore the permeability of the relationships between mind and body, the fluidity of identity, and the growing precariousness of the natural and constructed worlds around us. Whether through subversive humor, expressive abstraction, or non-Western forms of cosmological thinking, these artists demonstrate that there are pathways to be found, strategies of coping and healing to be discovered, and ways to come together in a fractured time.

Members will enjoy lunch on their own at either the Chelsea Market or Chelsea Market Passage on the High Line before exploring the NYC’s Chelsea art district through a self-guided tour. Options include Dia Chelsea, the area's spectacular blue chip art galleries, and public art on the High Line. A map will be provided with exhibition information as an aid for this exploration. In case of rain, attendees will visit the MoMA after the Whitney (on view: Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning and Käthe Kollwitz, among other exhibits).

Members-only; $180 trip fee. Boxed dinner is an additional fee. Register online here or via the button below.

ONLINE PROGRAM

Art and the Demands of Memory at the Katzen Art Center

Aneta Georgievska-Shine, professor of art history, University of Maryland

This exhibition deals with ways in which art is shaped by memories of traumatic experiences, focusing on the "second generation" Jewish artists/survivors. For most of these artists, these memories exist only through the accounts of their parents or relatives. Nonetheless, they are often just as "real" regarding their impact on their work.

Learn about each artist's personal story, sensibilities, and shared preoccupation with the past and how it has left an imprint. Some approach this through direct storytelling using the language of representation. Others are more abstract or conceptual. Some depict specific places associated with the wartime experiences of their family members, while others revisit those sites of trauma more metaphorically. Some of their works have an almost documentary character. In others, the beholder is led along oblique pathways toward broader themes of identity, displacement, migration, and oblivion. 

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

Sculpting Space - The Architecture of Frank Gehry

Jennie Hirsh, professor of modern and contemporary art at the Maryland Institute College of Art 

(Reception 1 - 1:30 pm) 

This seminar surveys the career of Canadian-American deconstructivist architect Frank Gehry, examining residential, commercial, cultural, and other educational buildings in cities located in both North America and Europe. Beginning with Gehry House, the suburban California home that the architect renovated for his own family in California in 1977, this conversation will illustrate by example the original and forward-looking contributions that Frank Gehry has made to the built environment in North America and Europe. In retracing the evolution of Gehry's particular postmodern trajectory, we will study a selection of his buildings for their innovative structural and sculptural forms, focusing on a selection of projects, including Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein (1989), the Olympic Fish Pavilion in Barcelona (1992), the Guggenheim Bilbao (1997), the Peter B. Lewis Building at Case Western Reserve University (2002), the Disney Concert Hall (2003) in Los Angeles, the renovation of the Art Gallery of Ontario (2008) in Toronto, the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis (1993 and 2011), the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2014), and, most recently, the innovative Core Project at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2020).

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)

ONLINE PROGRAM

Known But Unknown: Art as Empathy - Doris Salcedo and Sculptural Revelation

Jennie Hirsh, professor of modern and contemporary art at the Maryland Institute College of Art 

Known But Unknown is a series on four contemporary artists (three of whom are working today) curated by Kristen Hileman.

This lecture will focus on Doris Salcedo (b. 1958), a Colombian artist whose sculptures and installations have systematically addressed themes of trauma, violence, and oppression in her native Colombia and beyond as filtered through social, racial, political, and historical inequities as well as specific crises and events. Informed by careful research and personal interviews, Salcedo's objects and spatial manipulations combine and transform the vestiges of pain and suffering with sculptural forms and experiences that not only memorialize loss but also enact empathy. Key works and projects to be addressed include Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002), Shibboleth (2007), her commission for the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern, and Disremembered X (2020-2021), as well as additional individual projects and site-specific interventions. 

$15 fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)