| IN DISCUSSION
Public Programs
The Institute: your destination for the past, present, and future of art.
Connect to the latest thinking about the arts from ancient times to tomorrow’s prospects. Become part of the conversation, keep up with our events calendar (further down this page) and choose from our extensive range of lecture series, special lectures, panel discussions, workshops, and conferences. Enjoy our video archive to catch up with previous events. Many of our lectures are broadcast live.
2019 Calendar
- January
- Tuesday, January 29, 2019, 6:00pm
Series: Medieval Art Forum
Speaker: Professor Alison Locke Perchuk, Associate Professor, California State University-Channel Islands, and Member (2018-2019), Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton
Title: Landscape Sanctified: Topographic Miracles in the Art of Medieval Italy
RSVP requiredfor Allison Perchuk's talk LEARN MORE about "Other Feminisms: Four Indian Women Artists"
Abstract:
Medieval Latin Christianity harbored at its core a paradox in terms of the presence of the sacred in the world. On the one hand, the natural world and all it contains were God’s creation; in this sense divinity inhered within. On the other hand, specific locations were constituted as nodes of concentrated sanctity, primarily through human activities that summoned, witnessed, or were abetted by the divine. Processes of Christianization are typically understood through this latter anthropological lens: the arrival of holy persons, the teaching of Christian history and principles, the construction and embellishment of churches and related structures. As recent research in history, literature, and art history has shown, ecological considerations were also very much present in representational strategies, sites, and materials. This talk explores the exchange between humans and nature in the sanctification of the Italian peninsula using as a heuristic the miracles presented in the Dialogues of Pope Gregory I (d. 604), one of the most widely distributed texts of the early Middle Ages. The talk highlights the ways in which this text harbors traces of an ecological understanding of sanctity and examines the translation of that understanding into the representational art of medieval Italy, primarily wall paintings, manuscript illuminations, and architectural sculpture. The talk centers around two case studies that themselves express this tension: the life of Saint Benedict and miracles involving water and fish.
- Tuesday, January 29, 2019, 6:00pm
- February
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Friday, February 1, 2019, 6:30pm
Series: China Project Workshop
Michelle Wang, Department of Art and Art History, Georgetown University, will speak on architecture, sculpture, and materiality on the Silk Road.
The discussion will be moderated by Lan-ying Tseng, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU
RSVP: chinaprojectworkshop@gmail.com -
Sunday, February 10, 2019, 5:00pm-7:00pm
Title: Celebrating Apollinaire on the One Hundredth Anniversary of his Death
RSVP required for Apollinaire [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about "Other Feminisms: Four Indian Women Artists"Please join the Institute of Fine Arts with soprano Sylvie Robert and pianist Steve Beck in a recital celebrating the works of Guillaume Apollinaire.
Program:
Welcome and Opening Remarks: Edward Sullivan, Deputy Director; Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of the History of Art at New York University, The Institute of Fine ArtsRecital:
Sylvie Robert, voice; and Steve Beck, pianoClara Schumann, Lorelei, 1843 Claude Debussy, recueillement, 1887 Christian Morgenstern, calligramme la nuit les poisson, 1905 Marcel Duchamp, erratum musical, 1912 Serge Prokofiev, opus 27, 1916 Arthur Honegger, Six Poemes d’Apollinaire, 1917 Germaine Albert-Birot, les mamelles de Tirésias, beginning, 1917 Francis Poulenc, les mamelles de Tiresias, beginning, 1947 Georges Auric, Adieu New York, piano solo, 1920 Virgil Thomson, Preciosilla, 1926 Francis Poulenc, si tu veux, 1931 Francis Poulenc, la petite servante, 1931 Francis Poulenc, banalités, 1940
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Tuesday, February 12, 2019, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Series: Great Hall Exhibition Series
Title: "Finding Space in Modernism: Considering the Graphic Arts of Elaine Lustig Cohen" RSVP required for the Great Hall Exhibition [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about the "Great Hall Exhibition"The Institute of Fine Arts at NYU Great Hall Exhibition Series invites you to a symposium on Elaine Lustig Cohen's multifaceted career as an artist and graphic designer. Presented as the closing event for the exhibition Graphic Objects: Elaine Lustig Cohen's Sculptural Works, the symposium will explore Lustig Cohen's interdisciplinary approach to art making and graphic design, her adoption of European avant-garde movements and styles, and the legacy of geometric abstraction in a transnational context.
Speakers include:
Steven Heller, Design author and art director
Abigail McEwen, Associate Professor, Latin American Art, and Director of Undergraduate Studies, University of Maryland
Shira Backer, Assistant Curator, The Jewish Museum
Francesca Ferrari, PhD Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts
Kolleen Ku, MA Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts -
Tuesday, February 12, 2019, 7:30pm-9:00pm
Title: Duke House Exhibition Opening
RSVP required for the Duke House Exhibition [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about the "Duke House Exhibition"As part of the Duke House Exhibition Series, the Institute of Fine Arts is pleased to present the work of the Argentinian artists Sarah Grilo (1920-2007) and José Antonio Fernández-Muro (1920-2014). Opening February 12, 2019, the exhibition Grilo/Fernández-Muro: 1962-1984 seeks to map the influences and movements that inspired their artistic practices from the 1960s through the 1980s. The show features a selection of abstract paintings which create an intimate dialogue between Fernández-Muro’s mimicry of urban and industrial patterns and Grilo’s morphological style. In addition to these paintings, the exhibition also includes an array of exhibition catalogues, publications, documentary photographs, and other rare archival materials. This exhibition is accompanied by a forthcoming panel discussion that includes a conversation with the participation of the artists’ grandson, Mateo Fernández-Muro, moderated by Professor Edward Sullivan.
Grilo/Fernández-Muro: 1962-1982 was organized by Andrea Carolina Zambrano, Damasia Lacroze, Emireth Herrera, and Juan Gabriel Ramírez Bolívar, and was made possible through the support of the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, Cecilia de Torres Ltd. New York, and Mateo Fernández-Muro. This exhibition is generously funded by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA).
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Saturday, February 16, 2019, 2:00pm-4:00pm
Title: Special Session on New Research on Brazilian Art by the National Committee for the History of Art
Chaired by: Edward Sullivan
RSVP required for the Special Session on New Research on Brazilian Art [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about Special Session on New Research on Brazilian ArtThe National Committee of the History of Art invites all CAA members to a special session on “New Research on Brazilian Art.” This session is planned in conjunction with the international CIHA congress in São Paulo (2020). The session is chaired by Edward J. Sullivan (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University), who will also lead off with a paper on 20 years of research on Brazilian art in the US Luisa Valle (The Graduate Center and Hunter College, City University of New York) will follow with a presentation on Roberto Burle Marx and Brasilia, followed by Esther Gabara (Duke University) on her current Pop América exhibition, Brian Bentley, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, on Pop Art in Brazil and Vivian Crockett, Columbia University, on Lygia Pape.
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Wednesday, February 20, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Artists at the Institute
Speaker: Josh Kline
RSVP Required for Josh Kline's talk [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about the Josh KlineWorking primarily in sculpture, video, and installation, Josh Kline (b. 1979) creates artworks and exhibitions that consider the ways in which our humanity has been transformed, commodified, and instrumentalized within neoliberal society. Examining the regimes of control to which the human body is increasingly subjected—ranging from governmental and corporate surveillance to the relentless pursuit of youth—Kline addresses the erosion of boundaries between labor and leisure and the incursion of consumer culture into the most literally intimate aspects of life: blood, DNA, neurochemistry. More recent projects have explored the impact of emerging technological innovations including automation, AI, and deep fakes on society. In 2015, Kline began a major cycle of installation-based projects exploring the politics and economics of the 21st Century.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Time-Based Media Lecture
Title: #TheTruth and Other Variabilities from SFMOMA’s Media Conservation Lab
RSVP required for #TheTruth [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about the Josh KlineAbstract: The conceptual artwork #TheTruth (2013-ongoing) by Oakland-based artist Anthony Discenza embodies qualities that characterize many of today’s media artworks: variability of display, modification of source code, and a master composed of information. As custodians of such artworks, how can we best manage the change we’re already anticipating? How can we manage our own discomfort, evoked by a lack of clear boundaries of what the work can be and can become? Employing this artwork as a reference point, this talk explores the challenges institutions and collectors face when acquiring, exhibiting, and preserving media art, and presents one museum’s approach to collection care and stewardship. About the Speaker: Martina Haidvogl is the Associate Media Conservator at SFMOMA, where she has piloted documentation and preservation initiatives for the Media Arts collection since 2011. Martina has lectured and published internationally on media conservation and its implications for museum collections, as well as multi-voice documentation strategies using a MediaWiki platform. She studied conservation and restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria, and the Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland, majoring in conservation for modern and contemporary art. Before joining SFMOMA, she worked in a film lab, for the Austrian Filmmuseum, and for Agathe Jarczyk's Atelier fuer Videokonservierung in Bern.
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Thursday, February 28, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Greek and Roman Seminar
Title: Etruscan and Italic Finds in the Aegean
Speaker: Alessandro Naso
RSVP required for Alessandro Naso's talk [opens in new window]
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Friday, February 1, 2019, 6:30pm
- March
- Friday, March 1, 2019
6:30pm - 8:30pm
Saturday, March 2, 2019, 9:30am - 5:00pm
Title: Queering Art History Conference
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Heather K. Love, Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
RSVP required for Queering Art history [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about "Queering Art History"The symposium will start with a keynote speaker on Friday evening, and continue with graduate student panels (moderated by NYU faculty) on Saturday.
Organizing committee: Erich Kessel, Christopher T. Richards, Ksenia M. Soboleva
The last few decades have witnessed a proliferation of approaches and methods influenced by queer theory within the humanities. Simultaneously, both academics and the general public have become increasingly interested in so-called "queer art," especially in the field of modern and contemporary art. Yet while scholars have assembled queer theory into an academic discourse and perhaps even a discipline, internal debates continually redefine the parameters and stakes of the term. However, the ways in which queer theory has and could further influence art historical methods and projects, has yet to be properly explored, particularly within a transhistorical dialogue. How does looking through the lens of queer theory shift our relationship to the object of inquiry? What is art history if history is queered? Moreover, how does queer theory relate to prior art historical engagements with gender and sexuality? This conference will offer a platform for many different voices to work through these and related questions. As we raise these questions, we also ask: What are the limitations or possibilities of ‘queer' as it relates to analyses of race, economic position, and the political?
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Thursday, March 7, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Huber Colloquium
Speaker: Jordana Mendelson
Title: Provocations on Paper: Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí in NYC
RSVP required for Mendelson's talk [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí in NYCAbstract: This lecture explores how Miró and Dalí were promoted by their New York dealers, and how their approaches to the design and distribution of the ephemera that accompanied their exhibitions ultimately correlated to differences in their critical fortunes, especially as related to their paired exhibitions at the MoMA in 1941. Miró and his dealer Pierre Matisse represent a craftsman’s concern with paper and the prestige of a well-made publication; Dalí and his dealer Julien Levy represent a much closer connection with the surrealist use of and interest in ephemera. Both artists brought to their experiences in NYC the European avant-garde’s fascination with paper as a tool for promotion and controversy.
- Tuesday, March 12, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Silberberg Lecture
Speaker: Gerry Guest
Title: Embodiment and Excess in the Très Riches Heures
RSVP required for Gerry Guest's talk [opens in new window] - Wednesday, March 13, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Artists at the Institute
Speaker: Morgan O’Hara
RSVP required for Morgan O'Hara's talk [opens in new window] - Thursday, March 14, 2019, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Series: Pre-Columbian Society of New York Lecture
Speaker: Robert M. Rosenswig
RSVP required for Rosenswig's talk [opens in new window] -
Thursday, March 28, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: Works in Progress
Speaker: Nina Kallmyer
This event is only open to the Institute's Community -
Friday, March 29, 2019, 6:30pm
Series: China Project Workshop
Dagmar Schäfer, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, will discuss a topic to be announced.
The discussion will be moderated by Dorothy Ko, Barnard College
RSVP: chinaprojectworkshop@gmail.com
- Friday, March 1, 2019
6:30pm - 8:30pm
- April
- Thursday, April 4, 2019, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Series: Pre-Columbian Society of New York
Speaker: Thomas B.F. Cummins, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art, Harvard University
RSVP required for Thomas B.F. Cummins' talk [opens in new window] -
Tuesday, April 9, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: Lucio Fontana in Buenos Aires circa 1946
Speaker: María Amalia García, Andrea Giunta, and Iria Candela
RSVP required for "Lucio Fontana in Buenos Aires circa 1946" [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about "Lucio Fontana in Buenos Aires circa 1946"A panel discussion with María Amalia García, Researcher at the CONICET at the Instituto de Teoría e Historia del Arte “Julio E. Payró Argentina" Universidad de Buenos Aires; and Andrea Giunta, Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Principal Researcher at CONICET; and Iria Candela, Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Moderated by Edward J. Sullivan, Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of the History of Art at New York University.
Organized by The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Friday, April 12, 2019, 6:30pm
Series: China Project Workshop Kee Il Choi Jr., Ph.D. Candidate, Leiden University, will speak on the topic “Ornament from China: Henri-Léonard Bertin's drawings of the Qianlong emperor's vases Chinois”.
The discussion moderator: TBA.
RSVP: chinaprojectworkshop@gmail.com -
Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: Greek and Roman Seminar
Speaker: Alan Shapiro, W. H. Collins Vickers Professor of Archaeology, Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University
RSVP required for Alan Shapiro's talk [opens in new window] - Thursday, April 18th, 6:00pm
Series: Medieval Art Forum
Title: Chartres Cathedral Restored: A Round-Table Discussion
Rsvp required for Chartres Cathedral Restored [opens in new window] -
Monday, April 22, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Works in Progress
Speaker: John Hopkins
This event is only open to the Institute's Community -
Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Silberberg Lecture
Speaker: Debra Diamond, curator for South and Southeast Asian Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
RSVP required for Debra Diamond's talk [opens in new window] -
Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: The Sudan Lecture
Speaker: Kathryn Howley
RSVP required for Kathryn Howley's talk [opens in new window] -
Tuesday, April 30, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: Huber Colloquium
Speaker: Juan Sanchez
RSVP required for Juan Sanchez's talk [opens in new window]
- Thursday, April 4, 2019, 6:00pm-8:00pm
- May
- Wednesday, May 1, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: Artists at the Institute - Sun Xun
RSVP required for Sun Xun's talk [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about Sun Xun's talkWorking primarily in drawing and animation, Sun Xun creates artworks that challenge the boundary between reality and fantasy. In recent years, Sun Xun uses New Media Art as a starting point to explore more possibilities within the expansive realm of visual art: he explores narrative methods using diverse mediums such as newspaper, book, woodcut print, Chinese ink, pigment powder, probes into non-linear expressions of time and space, and inquires into both realistic and fantastical representations based on his own understanding of society and sociological theories. Sun Xun (b. 1980, Fujian, China) lives and works in Beijing. Sun Xun has recently had solo exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia (2018); Saint Louis Art Museum, USA (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Taipei (2017); 2016 Audemars Piguet Art Commission, Miami Beach, USA (2016); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2016); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2016); National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan (2015); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2015); Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2014); Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada(2014); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2013) etc.
- Thursday, May 2, 2018, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: Contemporary Asian Art Forum
Speaker: Joan Kee, Associate Professor in the History of Art, University of Michigan
Title: Minimalism in Asia Major RSVP required for Joan Kee's talk [opens in new window] LEARN MORE about Sun Xun's talkTo what extent do Asian artists’ engagements with materiality call for a reading of Minimalism against the grain? Through works produced in the 1960s and 70s by artists like Roberto Chabet, Redza Piyadasa, Kim Lim and Yoli Laudico, this talk gestures to a contemporary art geography unmoored from received political and discursive configurations.
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Friday, May 3, 2018, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: China Project Workshop
Speaker: Peter Sturman
RSVP: chinaprojectworkshop@gmail.com -
Monday, May 6, 2018, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Series: Works in Progress
Speaker: Elizabeth Eisenberg
This event is only open to the Institute's Community -
Tuesday, May 7, 2018, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Title: Silberberg Lecture
Speaker: Michelle Kuo
RSVP required for Michelle Kuo's talk [opens in new window] -
Friday, May 10, 2018, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Series: Pre-Columbian Society of New York Lecture
Speaker: Richard Diehl, Professor Emeritus, University of Alabama
rsvp required for Richard Diehl's talk [opens in new window]
- Wednesday, May 1, 2019, 6:30pm-8:30pm