Artists and scholars gather to discuss the impact of the landmarked mansion's most recent contemporary show, "Intertwined," on Wednesday, February 1. The show will run through February 19, 2017
The Institute of Fine Arts (IFA) at New York University will host a public panel discussion on the establishment of its new exhibition series, Intertwined, which brings contemporary artwork to the walls of the historic James B. Duke House. The panel will feature Josh Blackwell, a contemporary artist and professor at Bennington College; artist Julia Bland; Susan Brown, associate curator of textiles at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; and Samantha De Tillio, assistant curator at the Museum of Arts and Design.
Organized by Kristen Gaylord with Rachel Vorsanger, Intertwined investigates the ways in which artists have used canvas, yarn, fiber, and weaving to reinvent painting as a medium that doesn’t require paint. The exhibition features the work of Julia Bland, Channing Hansen, Josh Faught, and Sergej Jensen.
The works featured in Intertwined are in most ways dissimilar. Jensen’s piece entitled TBT combines knit wool and luminous painted canvas in a composition using modernist vocabulary. Bland’s stretcher-less graphic weave, hung to flutter, recalls a fringed rug or standard. Faught’s Century of the Self re-presents text found in his culling of archives related to gay history in an extravagant yet elegiac piecing of hemp, linen, and lamé. In Hansen’s playful work Atavism, wool is caught in a relapse toward its more familiar form as clothing.
What they share is their interaction with the varied but specific histories of textiles that they evoke. Hung in some of the most ornate rooms of the former residence of tobacco magnate James Buchanan Duke, the works emphasize contemporary painting’s role in highlighting a collector’s status and wealth, a position previously filled by tapestries—including the sixteenth-century Flemish tapestry that hangs above the grand staircase.
The Duke House Exhibition Series displays contemporary art in the Gilded Age interior of the former residence of the Duke family, juxtaposing the historic with the contemporary and inviting viewers to engage with both the past and the future of the Institute. Admission is free and open to the public. The four works are on view daily, 1–4 p.m., through February 19, 2017. The lecture on Wednesday, February 1 will at 6 p.m. at Duke House, located at 1 E. 78th Street in Manhattan. RSVP for the event.