For this Alfred Z. Solomon residency artists, curators and critics discuss the nature, experience and current practice of abstract art.
No reservations necessary. Free and open to the public.
Thursday November 11
5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Steven Madoff and Barry Schwabsky two keynote lectures introduced by Hillary Reder ’11 and David Serotte ’11
Friday November 12
9:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Jessica Stockholder and Ian Berry discussion in the gallery
Coffee break
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
John Weber chairs panel with Ian Berry, Steven Madoff , Barry Schwabsky, and Jessica Stockholder
Lunch with students and guests
2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Octavio Zaya chairs panel with artists Cheryl Donegan, Jim Hodges, James Hyde, and Victoria Palermo
**Additional Programming: Beckett Shorts
Solomon Symposium participants are also invited to an evening performance of short works by playwright Samuel Beckett, presented at 8:30 in the galleries by the Skidmore Theater Department.
For tickets and information please contact the Skidmore Theater Box Office at (518) 580-5439, email boxoffice@skidmore.edu, or click Beckett shorts.
Solomon Residency Speaker Biographies
Thursday Keynote Speakers
A poet and critic, Steven Madoff has written extensively on contemporary art for publications such as Artforum, the New York Times, ARTnews, Modern Painters and Time magazine, among many others. His recent publications include Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) (MIT Press); Christopher Wilmarth: Light and Gravity (Princeton University Press); and Rebecca Horn: Moon Mirror (Hatje Cantz), co-authored with Doris von Drathen. He is also the editor of Pop Art: A Critical History in the series Documents of Twentieth-Century Art (University of California Press). His poems have been published widely and are gathered in the volume While We’re Here (Hard Press). He is the Senior Critic at Yale University’s School of Art.
Barry Schwabsky is the art critic for the Nation and co-editor of international reviews for Artforum. His essays have appeared in many additional publications, including Flash Art, the London Review of Books, and Art in America. The author of The Widening Circle: Consequences of Modernism in Contemporary Art (Cambridge University Press) and Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting (Phaidon Press), Schwabsky has contributed to numerous books and exhibition catalogues on contemporary and modern art. His poems have been published in two collections, Opera Poems 1981–2002 (Meritage Press) and Book Left Open in the Rain (The Brooklyn Rail/Black Square Editions).
Speakers introduced by:
Hillary Reder is an art history major, Skidmore class of 2011. Her thesis topic is commedia dell’arte and circus images in Weimar paintings by Max Beckmann. Reder has assisted with contemporary art exhibitions in Jerusalem and upstate New York and is currently circulation manager of Salmagundi and curatorial intern at the Tang.
David Serotte is an art history major, Skidmore class of 2011. He was a student co-curator of the 2010 Tang Museum exhibition African Pots and Gender and is currently a curatorial intern at the museum. Serotte’s research interests include gender, sexuality, and performance in modern and contemporary art.
Friday Speakers
Morning Panel:
Ian Berry is Associate Director and The Susan Rabinowitz Malloy ’45 Curator of the Tang Museum. A specialist on contemporary art, Berry has curated over sixty museum exhibitions. Recent publications include Fred Tomaselli (Prestel, 2009), Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History (MIT Press, 2009), and with Tom Lewis: Lives of The Hudson (Prestel, 2010).
Jessica Stockholder’s complex site-specific installations incorporating everyday materials, architectural elements, and bold color pioneered the genre of installation art. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Dia Center for the Arts, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, the Renaissance Society, Chicago, the Power Plant, Toronto, and currently at the Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Stockholder currently serves as professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at Yale University.
John Weber is the Dayton Director of Tang Museum and Professor of Liberal Studies at Skidmore College. At the Tang, he has organized And Therefore I Am, Joachim Schmid: Photoworks 1982-2007, and Molecules That Matter, an interdisciplinary exhibition on chemistry, art, and history with Ray Giguere. Weber was the Curator of Education and Public Programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1993 to 2004.
Afternoon Panel
Cheryl Donegan’s over two-decade body of work interrogates issues relating to sex, gender, and consumer culture to art history and art-making. Her work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, and Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, and in numerous exhibitions at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Since the late 1980s, Jim Hodges has been producing art that explores love, loss, and desire. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including solo shows at the Tang Museum, Hayward Gallery, London, and a recent traveling solo exhibition at the Centre Georges Pomidou, Paris, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice, and Camden Arts Center, London. Based in New York, Hodges is a visiting professor at Yale University.
James Hyde’s eccentric paintings combine a long-running commitment to and exploration of abstraction and the materiality of painting. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, and San Diego Museum of Art, among many others, and recent group exhibitions at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, and David Risley Gallery, London. Hyde recently collaborated with Svetlana Alpers on a publication and suite of prints that focus on works by Giambattista Tiepolo entitled Painting Then for Now.
Using a diverse range of materials, such as rubber, grass, and moss, Victoria Palermo’s work often addresses the complex, at times humorous relationship between the natural environment and human-made world. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Art in General, New York, White Columns, New York, and Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, among others. Palermo is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Skidmore College.
Octavio Zaya is a New York-based curator, editor, and art writer. He is Director of Atlántica, a bilingual quarterly journal published by CAAM (Las Palmas, Spain), Curator at Large and Advisor of Museum of Contemporary Art, MUSAC (León, Spain) and co-Director of its journal Radar. Zaya served on the curatorial teams of Documenta 11, Kassel, and the 1st and 2nd Johannesburg Biennials. He has organized exhibitions of Iranian artists, Israeli artists, and Latin American artists for museums in Spain, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, and major solo exhibitions on the works of artists such as Candice Breitz, Shirin Neshat, Jesper Just, and Paul Pfeiffer.