Art
Events Fall 2012
Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitors in the Arts Series Lecture
Kara Walker, More & Less
October 2, 7 p.m.,
Vollum Lecture Hall
Public artist talk followed by a public reception at the Cooley Gallery.
The
Cooley will be open 12-9 p.m. on October 2.
Kara Walker (detail) Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi's Blue Tale,
2011
Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York © Kara
Walker
The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery is proud to present a one-person exhibition of the work of celebrated artist Kara Walker. Since her first exhibition at the Drawing Center in 1994, Walker has fearlessly explored America's history of slavery, racism, and political and sexual violence with a riveting, deeply psychological visual vocabulary based, in part, on the tradition of the cut-paper silhouette. Walker's poetic, whimsical, and, at times, nightmarish fictions are achieved through an experimental synthesis of puppetry, poetry, film, drawing, and mixed-media. The exhibition includes Walker's most recent film—Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale (2011)—and a body of prints and multiples from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale comes to Reed College courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY.
Kara Walker visits Reed College as a Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitor in the Arts. Walker's visit to Reed College is organized by Kris Cohen, Assistant Professor of Art History and Humanities. Kara Walker, More & Less is curated by Stephanie Snyder, John and Anne Hauberg Curator and Director. The exhibition publication, which will be distributed free to visitors, contains a scholarly essay by Kris Cohen, with an introduction by the curator.
Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California in 1969 and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. She is known for her candid investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures that have appeared in numerous exhibitions worldwide. Her major survey show, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, premiered at the The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN in February 2007 before traveling to ARC/Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth. Other recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland (2011); CAC Málaga, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain and MDD - Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle, Belgium (both 2008). She participated in the 52nd Venice International Biennale in 2007 and was the United States representative to the 25th International São Paulo Biennial in Brazil in 2002.
Walker is the recipient of many awards including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997, the Deutsche Bank Prize in 2000, and United States Artists Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship in 2008. Her work is included in numerous museums and public collections including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tate Gallery, London; the Centro Nazionale per le Arti Contemporanee, Rome; and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt. She lives and works in New York City.
About the Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitors Program
The Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitors Program in the Visual Arts was established by a generous 1988 gift from Edward and Sue Cooley and John and Betty Gray in support of art history and its place in the humanities. The lecture program enables Reed College's art department to bring distinguished individuals in the arts to the college for periods of up to a week. These visitors give public lectures and seminars with students.
The intent of the program is to bring to campus creative people who are distinguished in connection with the visual arts and who will provide "a forum for conceptual exploration, challenge, and discovery." The program is named in honor of Stephen Ostrow as a tribute to his career and out of respect for his advisory role in the formulation of the Cooley-Gray gift and the design of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery. Ostrow is the Chief of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, D.C.
Past artists have included:
2012.10 Kara Walker, collage artist
2012.02 Richard Shiff, art historian
2011.09 Do Ho Suh, installation artist/sculptor
2011.03 Joseph Koerner, art historian
2010.11 Patricia Fortini Brown, art historian
2010.02 Terry Winters, painter/printmaker
2009.10 David Rosand, art historian
2009.03 Alexander Nemerov, art historian
2008.10 David Reed '68, painter/installation artist
2008.03 Martin Powers
2007.11 Gary Hill, video artist
2007.10 Barbara Stafford, art historian
2007.04 David Freedberg, art historian
2006.10 Mona Hatoum, installation artist/sculptor
2005.04 Ann Hamilton, installation artist
2004.09 Hans Haacke, conceptualist artist
2003.11 Jennifer Bartlett, painter/printmaker
2003.04 T.J. Clark, art historian
2003.04 Al Held, abstract painter
2002.11 Leo Steinberg, art historian
2000.04 Michael Fried, art historian
2000.01 Judy Pfaff, installation artist
1999.04 Linda Nochlin, art historian
1999.03 Adrian Piper, performance artist
1998.09 Robert Davidson, performance/installation artist
1997.09 Robert Morris, minimalist sculptor
1996.09 Jules Feiffer, graphic artist