The New York University Division of Libraries will present a panel event reflecting on the Whitney Musuem’s David Wojnarowicz retrospective, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, and concurrent summer exhibitions at NYU and P.P.O.W.
The New York University Division of Libraries will present a panel event reflecting on the Whitney Musuem’s David Wojnarowicz retrospective, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, and concurrent summer exhibitions at NYU and P.P.O.W Gallery. The panel on Oct. 9 from 6:30 PM-8:00 PM features Whitney curator David Kiehl, P.P.O.W Co-founder Wendy Olsoff, and NYU contributing curator Hugh Ryan.
The summer of 2018 offered a slew of exhibitions, programs, new publications, and criticism surrounding the work of David Wojnarowicz. The Whitney Museum's retrospective, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, was the epicenter of activities, with several concurrent exhibitions elsewhere, including P.P.O.W's Soon All This Will Be Picturesque Ruins: The Installations of David Wojnarowicz and NYU's The Unflinching Eye: The Symbols of David Wojnarowicz.
History Keeps Me Awake at Night was the first Wojnarowicz retrospective since 1999 and explored the artist’s seminal work and enduring political and cultural influence (strengthened during the AIDS crisis in the ‘80s and ‘90s). In a review of History Keeps Me Awake at Night, New York Times Magazine wrote “It’s the first opportunity in decades for people to see Wojnarowicz’s work in its polymathic totality: photography, spray-painted garbage-can lids, stencils, photocollages, sculptures, music, films and large collage paintings of tanks, brains and gunslingers, hung as grandly as anything at the Louvre.”
Running in conjunction with the Whitney show (Jul. 13 - Sep. 30), NYU’s The Unflinching Eye utilizes archival material—drawn almost entirely from the David Wojnarowicz Papers housed in NYU’s Downtown Collection—to contextualize Wojnarowicz's creative practice and P.P.O.W’s Soon All This Will Be Picturesque Ruins (Jul. 12 - Aug. 24) brought together Wojnarowicz’s major installations for the first time.
The panel event will offer reflections on these disparate exhibitions, how they complement and contrast with one another, and how the events of this summer reflect and build upon Wojnarowicz's legacy here in New York and the world over.
The panel discussion is from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM with a reception to follow at Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 3rd Floor, 70 Washington Square South [Subways A,C,E, B,D,M to West 4th Street; 6 line to Astor Place; R train to 8th Street]. RSVPs are essential and can be made through this form. Reporters wishing to attend should RSVP by contacting Sarah Binney at sarah.binney@nyu.edu or 212.998.6829.
The Unflinching Eye: The Symbols of David Wojnarowicz is on display in the Mamdouha Bobst Gallery in the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, main floor until October 11 (exhibition is viewable between 7 AM and 11 PM). The exhibition and panel event are free and open to the public.
About NYU Libraries’ Downtown Collection
NYU Libraries’ Downtown Collection documents the downtown New York art, performance, and literary scenes from 1974 to the present and is extremely rich in archival holdings, including paper, photography, moving image, and born digital content. Many of its artists bore early witness to the AIDS epidemic; some did not survive it. Established in 1994, the Downtown Collection continues to grow, supporting a broad spectrum of cultural studies and drawing researchers from around the world.