Roundtable with Curators and Art Historians: Darby English, Hamza Walker, and Rebecca Zorach

Roundtable with Curators and Art Historians: Darby English, Hamza Walker, and Rebecca Zorach

Panel
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CWAC Lounge
Add to Calendar 2018-04-30 11:30:00 2018-04-30 13:00:00 Roundtable with Curators and Art Historians: Darby English, Hamza Walker, and Rebecca Zorach Conversations with artists conducted by scholars, conservators, and curators are an increasingly integral component of textual and object-based research and museum practices, particularly when investigating recent histories and marginalized practices. Whether we publish these interviews as standalone texts or use them as evidence in our writings (dissertations, books, and articles), we are creating a new historical record. The prevalence of this practice stands in stark contrast to the absence of discussion about best practices for conducting, editing, and presenting/framing interviews with artists, as well as a lack of conceptual inquiry into the interview as a form. This series aims to provide a critical space for those engaged in interviews to workshop our concerns and learn new approaches, as well as to provide a point of entry for those who have not yet engaged in interviews.  Darby English teaches cultural studies and modern and contemporary art as the Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago. He is also Adjunct Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Conversations with living artists are central to his research process. His most recent book is 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Hamza Walker is the Executive Director of LAXART in Los Angeles, and the recipient of the Ordway Prize and the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. Walker recently co-curated, with Aram Moshayedi, the 2016 edition of the Hammer Museum’s “Made in LA” biennial. As the Associate Curator and Director of Education at the Renaissance Society (1994-2016), his exhibitions included, “A Painting Is A Painting Isn’t A Painting” (2015),“Wadada Leo Smith, Ankhrasmation: The Language Scores 1967 - 2015” (2015), co-curated with John Corbett; and “Teen Paranormal Romance” (2014) and "Black Is, Black Ain't," 2008. His public conversations with artists continue to contribute a crucial component to the record of recent art history. Rebecca Zorach is the Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History at Northwestern University, where she teaches and writes on early modern European art, contemporary activist art, and art of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with Daniel Tucker, she co-organizes Never The Same, an archival and oral history project dealing with socially and politically engaged art in Chicago since the 1960s. She is the co-author of The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago (Northwestern University Press, 2017) and her forthcoming book, Starring the Black Community: The Arts of Radical Solidarity in 1960s Chicago is coming out from Duke University Press in 2019. This series is sponsored by the Department of Art History. Lunch will be provided (but is limited). All are welcome. Please email any questions to Zsofi Valyi-Nagy at zsvn@uchicago.edu. CWAC Lounge Department of Art History drupal@seastar.uchicago.edu America/Chicago public

Conversations with artists conducted by scholars, conservators, and curators are an increasingly integral component of textual and object-based research and museum practices, particularly when investigating recent histories and marginalized practices. Whether we publish these interviews as standalone texts or use them as evidence in our writings (dissertations, books, and articles), we are creating a new historical record. The prevalence of this practice stands in stark contrast to the absence of discussion about best practices for conducting, editing, and presenting/framing interviews with artists, as well as a lack of conceptual inquiry into the interview as a form. This series aims to provide a critical space for those engaged in interviews to workshop our concerns and learn new approaches, as well as to provide a point of entry for those who have not yet engaged in interviews. 

Darby English teaches cultural studies and modern and contemporary art as the Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago. He is also Adjunct Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Conversations with living artists are central to his research process. His most recent book is 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

Hamza Walker is the Executive Director of LAXART in Los Angeles, and the recipient of the Ordway Prize and the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. Walker recently co-curated, with Aram Moshayedi, the 2016 edition of the Hammer Museum’s “Made in LA” biennial. As the Associate Curator and Director of Education at the Renaissance Society (1994-2016), his exhibitions included, “A Painting Is A Painting Isn’t A Painting” (2015),“Wadada Leo Smith, Ankhrasmation: The Language Scores 1967 - 2015” (2015), co-curated with John Corbett; and “Teen Paranormal Romance” (2014) and "Black Is, Black Ain't," 2008. His public conversations with artists continue to contribute a crucial component to the record of recent art history.

Rebecca Zorach is the Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History at Northwestern University, where she teaches and writes on early modern European art, contemporary activist art, and art of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with Daniel Tucker, she co-organizes Never The Same, an archival and oral history project dealing with socially and politically engaged art in Chicago since the 1960s. She is the co-author of The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago (Northwestern University Press, 2017) and her forthcoming book, Starring the Black Community: The Arts of Radical Solidarity in 1960s Chicago is coming out from Duke University Press in 2019.

This series is sponsored by the Department of Art History.

Lunch will be provided (but is limited). All are welcome. Please email any questions to Zsofi Valyi-Nagy at zsvn@uchicago.edu.