EXPO CHICAGO Announces /Dialogues Panel Discussion Series for 2018

The International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, announces the full 2018 /Dialogues program, presented in partnership with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), to take place during the seventh annual exposition (September 27–30, 2018). Located on the east end of Navy Pier’s Festival Hall, the /Dialogues Stage will offer continuous programming open to all EXPO CHICAGO visitors throughout each day of the fair, providing multiple opportunities to attend provocative artistic discourse. Featuring leading international artists, curators, scholars and arts professionals, the /Dialogues program has been hailed by Artforum: “What sets EXPO CHICAGO apart, really, is its excellent program of talks and panels.”

As previously announced, the 2018 /Dialogues program will include the third annual /Dialogues Symposium, to align with the Terra Foundation for American Art’s initiative Art Design Chicago. Entitled Present Histories: Art & Design in Chicago, the day-long series of discussions on Friday, September 28 will trace select artistic and design legacies produced in the city, spanning from 1968–2018, as well as their impact on the larger social, aesthetic and cultural movements from the twentieth-century to the present.

2018 EXPO CHICAGO programming consists of more than 30 panels, including the Curatorial Forum Panel, Art Critics Forum and the Symposium. In addition, the Northern Trust Anchor Lounge will once again host Exchange by Northern Trust: An Interactive Conversation Around the Art of Collecting, a series of exclusive discussions featuring experts on the contemporary art market, institutions and the economy.

“Providing a platform for rigorous criticism and discourse is at the core of EXPO CHICAGO’s programming, and we are thrilled to be working with leading international artists, professionals and scholars on presenting curated discussions that will range from themes of citizenship, representation, history and immersion through the lens of contemporary art,” said EXPO CHICAGO Director of Programming Stephanie Cristello. “The /Dialogues and Exchange by Northern Trust programs continue to reinforce the exposition’s foregrounding of intellectual practice in support of current topics that are necessary for engaging with art and culture. We remain grateful to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and to the commitment of our presenting sponsor Northern Trust, as we establish one of the most influential programs for collectors and professionals working in the art world today.”

/Dialogues

Drawing standing-room-only crowds, the /Dialogues program continues to present some of the most engaging, thought-provoking discussions in modern and contemporary art. Highlights of the 2018 program will include a discussion with 2017 MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey on the artist's continued interest in the ways in which history can be engaged, invoked and materialized in relation to African American history and experience; an open-to-the-public conversation for the Curatorial Forum on immersion and the senses in exhibition making, featuring Anna Gritz (Curator | KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and 2018 EXPO VIDEO Curator), Andria Hickey (Senior Curator | MOCA Cleveland), Sean Raspet (Artist | Jessica Silverman Gallery) and Jo-ey Tang (Director of Exhibitions | Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art and Design), moderated by Stephanie Cristello (Director of Programming | EXPO CHICAGO, Editor-in-Chief | THE SEEN, SAIC BFA 2013); Iván Navarro on institutional structures of power; a conversation moderated by Co-Curator of the U.S. Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale Mimi Zeiger with architects and scholars on how data is visualized, and the responsibility of representation; and Daniel Berger, a leading clinician and researcher in the field of HIV/AIDS as well as an avid art collector and Founder of Iceberg Projects, on the occasion of his recent book Militant Eroticism: The ART+Positive Archives published by Sternberg Press.

Additional panels from the previously announced Art & Design Symposium will include a performative intervention by artist Brendan Fernandes and conversations featuring writer Sarah Thornton, AfriCOBRA founding member Gerald Williams (SAIC BFA 1951), artists Torkwase Dyson, Kay Rosen, Theaster Gates (SAIC HON 2014) and more.

/Dialogues Full Schedule

Friday, September 28

Symposium Schedule: Present Histories: Art and Design in Chicago

11:30am — Performance: Révérence | Brendan Fernandes (Artist | Monique Meloche Gallery)

Initiating the Symposium, Artist Brendan Fernandes (b. 1979 Nairobi, Kenya) stages a site-specific iteration of his performative work Révérence (2015), featuring a series of choreographed dancers to both welcome and confront the audience. Using his training in classical ballet, alongside his unique cultural background as a Kenyan-Indian-Canadian, the performance features classically-trained dancers from the Joffrey Academy of Dance to question identity and power dynamics.

Immediately following the performance piece, a discussion will commence with author and sociologist of culture Sarah Thornton and Fernandes. Fernandes' recent acclaimed exhibition, The Master and Form, took place at the Graham Foundation earlier this year, and is presented in conjunction with The Living Mask at the DePaul Art Museum, on view during EXPO ART WEEK through December 16, 2018. Révérence features a collaboration with the Joffrey Academy of Dance.

12:00–1:00pm — Brendan Fernandes | In Conversation with Sarah Thornton

Panelists: Brendan Fernandes (Artist | Monique Meloche Gallery) and Sarah Thornton (Author and Sociologist of Culture)

Author and sociologist of culture Sarah Thornton leads a featured conversation with Chicago-based artist Brendan Fernandes. The discussion will trace the impact Chicago has had on Fernandes’ work, as well as the role of performance in his practice, which questions positions of power, control and “queering space.”

2:00–3:00pm — AfriCOBRA: Chicago in the Age of Black Power

Panelists: Jae Jarrell (Artist, Member of AfriCOBRA, SAIC 1959-61), Wadsworth Jarrell (Artist, Member of AfriCOBRA, SAIC DIP 1958), and Gerald Williams (Artist | Kavi Gupta Gallery, Founding Member of AfriCOBRA, SAIC BFA 1951). Moderated by Franklin Sirmans (Director | Pérez Art Museum Miami).

This panel is presented in alignment with Art Design Chicago exhibitions at the Smart Museum of Art and the DuSable Museum of African American History, South Side Stories: Rethinking Chicago Art, 1960–1980 and South Side Stories: Holdings, which focus on the Black Arts Movement—from the Civil Rights Movement to AfriCOBRA.

A solo exhibition of the late member Barbara Jones Hogu entitled Resist, Relate, Unite 1968–1975 took place at the DePaul Art Museum earlier this year. An exhibition curated by Williams on the occasion of the fifty-year anniversary of the group, AfriCOBRA 50, will be on view at Kavi Gupta Gallery through November 24, 2018.

3:00pm — Book Signing: Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power

In the period of radical change that was 1963–83, young black artists at the beginning of their careers confronted difficult questions about art, politics and racial identity. How to make art that would stand as innovative, original, formally and materially complex, while also making work that reflected their concerns and experience as black Americans?

Soul of a Nation surveys this crucial period in American art history, bringing to light previously neglected histories of 20th-century black artists—including Sam Gilliam, Melvin Edwards, Jack Whitten, William T. Williams, Howardina Pindell, Barkley L. Hendricks, Senga Nengudi, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Charles White (SAIC 1937 – 38) and Frank Bowling, among others. This book explores both the art historical and social contexts, with subjects ranging from black feminism to AfriCOBRA and other artist-run groups, to the role of museums in the debates of the period and visual art’s relation to the Black Arts Movement. Over 170 artworks by these and many other artists of the era are illustrated in full color.

Presented in partnership with Kavi Gupta Gallery.

4:00–5:00pm — Alterity and the Exhibition Environment: Feminist History of Alternative Spaces in Chicago

Panelists: Lynne Warren (Adjunct Curator | Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago), Mary Patten (Member | ACT UP, Professor of Film, Video, New Media and Animation and Visual and Critical Studies | SAIC), Torkwase Dyson (Artist | Rhona Hoffman Gallery), and Kay Rosen (Artist, Former ARC Member). Moderated by Jenni Sorkin (SAIC BFA 1999, Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture | University of California, Santa Barbara).  

This conversation will trace the histories and roles of feminism in Chicago's alternative spaces from the 1970s to the present. Panelists will discuss the role alternative spaces played both within the canon of Chicago’s exhibition history and in the activities that defined feminist art and social practice in the city’s scene. In her chapter for the newly launched publication Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now, author Jenni Sorkin (moderator) delivers a survey of communal alternative exhibition spaces from 1973—1993 as they built momentum in Chicago alongside the commercial gallery system and during the women's movement. The panel features Lynne Warren, longtime champion of Chicago artists, whose groundbreaking exhibition Alternative Spaces: A History in Chicago (MCA Chicago, 1984) first tracked this history; Mary Patten, one of the founding members of ACT UP, an activist group formed to bring attention to the AIDS crisis; conceptual artist Kay Rosen, a prominent former member of the cooperative feminist art gallery Artist Residents of Chicago (ARC); and Torkwase Dyson, an interdisciplinary artist, whose projects such as tiny studio have examined a nomadic practice that generates both environmental interdependency and solitude.

The conversation thematically aligns with the Art Design Chicago exhibition, Where the Future Came From, at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery (November 1, 2018 – February 15, 2019) which explores the integral role of feminist artist-run activities throughout Chicago’s history. Torkwase Dyson, on view at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, will align with EXPO ART WEEK.

5:00pm — Book Launch: Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now

Edited by Maggie Taft and Robert Cozzolino (Judith Kirshner, Consulting Editor and Erin Hogan, Sidebars Editor). Chapter Authors: Wendy Greenhouse, Jennifer Jane Marshall, Maggie Taft, Robert Cozzolino, Rebecca Zorach and Jenni Sorkin (SAIC BFA 1999).

Art in Chicago is a magisterial account of the long history of Chicago art, from the rupture of the Great Fire in 1871 to the present. The first single-volume history of art and artists in Chicago, the book—in recognition of the complexity of the story it tells—presents an overlapping sequence of interrelated narratives that together tell a full and nuanced, yet wholly accessible history of visual art in the city. Funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art’s initiative Art Design Chicago, this newly launched publication will be available for a book signing at the /Dialogues Stage through the University of Chicago Press.

5:00pm — Screening: Designers in Film: A Glimpse into the Goldsholl Archive

A screening of select films and reels produced by the graphic design studio Goldsholl and Associates will be on view at the /Dialogues Stage as an interlude to the Symposium’s closing conversation surrounding Chicago’s Mid-Century impact on the advertising and commercial industry at large.

Presented in partnership with the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University.

5:30–6:30pm — Making the Modern Image: Mid-Century Commercial Industry in Chicago

Panelists:Theaster Gates (Artist | Richard Gray Gallery, Rebuild Foundation, SAIC HON 2014), Corinne Granof (Curator of Academic Programs | Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University) and Lara Allison (Lecturer of Art History, Theory and Criticism | SAIC). Moderated by Michael Golec (Associate Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism | SAIC).

Through recent exhibitions that relate the advertising and commercial publications industries to the context of contemporary art, this discussion will trace Chicago’s contribution to the glossy image that defined the Mid-Century aesthetic. Examining the political, social and cultural impact of these design philosophies, this panel will look at the national impact of firms and companies whose work pushed industry boundaries through avant-garde approaches. Featuring Theaster Gates, whose exhibition A Johnson Publishing Story, presented by Rebuild Foundation at Stony Island Arts Bank, explores the enduring role of Ebony and Jet magazines in defining and popularizing a black aesthetic and identity around the globe; Corinne Granof on the work of Goldsholl and Associates, whose films, television ads and other moving image work created “designs-in-film,” influenced by László Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus approach; and historian Lara Allison, speaking on the seminal legacy of the Great Ideas campaign by the Container Corporation from 1950–1980. This discussion, moderated by Michael Golec, will examine the many contributions of Chicago’s enduring impact on a national and international aesthetic.

Up is Down: Mid-Century Experiments in Advertising and Film at the Goldsholl Studio at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University will be on view through December 9, 2018 and A Johnson Publishing Story, Curated by Theaster Gates at the Rebuild Foundation’s Stony Island Arts Bank, extends through September 30, to align with EXPO ART WEEK.

Saturday, September 29

11:30am–12:30pm — IN/SITU In Conversation

Panelists: Iván Navarro (Artist | Paul Kasmin Gallery | New York, TEMPLON | Paris, Brussels)

Known for his large-scale installations in both public and indoor spaces, using neon as a primary medium paired with mirrored reflections, Iván Navarro discusses various projects on view in Chicago within the context of his relationship to critiquing power and institutional structures.

Additional artists and panelists to be announced. Presented in partnership with Artnet.

1:00pm — Book Signing: José Lerma: Pintor Interesante

José Lerma: Pintor Interesante is the first monograph of the contemporary artist’s work. Focusing on work created between 2007–2017, the publication highlights José Lerma’s (Associate Professor, Painting and Drawing | SAIC) breadth, inventiveness and his constant interweaving of history, politics, economics and the personal. The book features essays by art critic Christian Viveros-Fauné, critic and poet Barry Schwabsky and an interview with curator Kristin Korolowicz.

Presented in partnership with Kavi Gupta Gallery.

2:00–3:00pm — Dimensions of Citizenship | U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale

Panelists: Keller Easterling (Architect, Writer and Yale University Professor), Laura Kurgan (Associate Professor of Architecture | Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Columbia University) and Robert Gerard Pietrusko (Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Architecture | Harvard University Graduate School of Design). Moderated by Mimi Zeiger (Co-Curator | U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale).

Tracing the responsibility of the architect and the artist to depict not only flows of data, but also manifestations of glitches or abstractions, this discussion will examine the role of representation as an agent to reveal truth. Moderated by Mimi Zeiger, Co-Curator of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, this panel will be hosted within the context of the exhibition, entitled Dimensions of Citizenship.

Presented in partnership with CULTURED Magazine, and commissioners of the 2018 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale’s U.S. Pavilion, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago.

3:00pm — Book Signing: Dirk Denison 10 Houses

Architect and educator Dirk Denison reflects on the diverse influences that have shaped his practice over 30 years in a volume featuring 10 remarkable houses designed in a broad range of modernist vocabularies—each finely tuned to its site and occupants. Taking the form of an in-depth conversation between architect and educator Dirk Denison and journalist Fred A. Bernstein, this volume chronicles Denison’s childhood in Detroit; travels and early encounters with the arts and architecture; and his education at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. A perceptive interlocutor, Bernstein deftly draws upon Denison’s own insights into how these experiences have influenced his aesthetic sensibilities, design philosophy and working processes over 30 years of collaborative practice.

Published by ACTAR.

4:00–5:00pm — Curatorial Forum: On Immersion and Senses

Panelists: Anna Gritz (Curator | KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and 2018 EXPO VIDEO Curator), Andria Hickey (Senior Curator | MOCA Cleveland), Sean Raspet (Artist | Jessica Silverman Gallery) and Jo-ey Tang (Director of Exhibitions | Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art and Design). Moderated by Stephanie Cristello (Director of Programming | EXPO CHICAGO, Editor-in-Chief | THE SEEN, SAIC BFA 2013).

The format of the contemporary exhibition is one that often relies on sight and the visual impact of artists’ works within the static space of the gallery, museum or institution. This panel will trace how the non-concrete senses—scents, tastes and aural forms—are exhibited in space. Featuring artists and curators whose work has engaged with these senses and their impact on the body, this discussion will navigate different approaches to displaying pieces whose primary sensual interaction deviates from purely sight. From perfume installations, to sonic experiences and edible artworks, the conversation will trace the impact of senses and immersive practice on recent exhibition histories.

Presented in partnership with Independent Curators International (ICI).

5:30–6:30pm — Art Critics Forum: Criticism and the Image

Panelists: Ann Binlot (Freelance | Forbes, Galerie, The New York Times), Robin Peckham (Editor-in-Chief | LEAP), William S. Smith (Editor | Art in America) and Diego Del Valle Ríos (Editor | Terremotto). Moderated by Julieta Aranda (Artist and Editor | e—flux).

The third annual Art Critics Forum seeks to answer how the role of the image has shifted the output of criticism. Through the format of the visual essay, each of the panelists will take part in a short, silent presentation before opening into a roundtable discussion. From the perspective of author John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, through current disseminations of the image and its role as a vehicle for narrative in both online platforms and print publications, this program will consider how the image has either replaced or transformed the purpose of the written word.

Presented in partnership with Art and America and Virgin Hotels Chicago.

Sunday, September 30

12:00–1:00pm — AIDS and Eroticism: ART+Positive Archives

Panelists: Dr. Daniel Berger (Author | Militant Eroticism: The ART+Positive Archives, Collector, Founder of Iceberg Projects)

In 2015, Dr. Daniel Berger, a leading clinician and researcher in the field of HIV/AIDS as well as an avid art collector and gallery owner, acquired the previously unseen archives of ART+Positvie, an affinity group of ACT UP New York. ART+Positive was an artists’ and activists’ response to both the AIDS crisis and to the lack of action taken to address the crisis on the part of the U.S. Government. Many influential artists contributed to the group’s vision over the course of the turbulent 1980s and 1990s. In 2015 Berger and artist John Neff created an exhibition of the archives—originally compiled in the mid-1990s by Hunter Reynolds—at their gallery space, Iceberg Projects. The exhibition was later translated into the book, Militant Eroticism: The ART+ Positive Archives, which includes essays by Berger & Neff as well as previously unpublished writings by Ray Navarro, Hunter Reynolds and David Wojnarowicz. This panel explores the art and activism of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the intersections of race, class, sexuality and gender at the time.

Additional artists and panelists to be announced.

1:00pm — Book Signing: Militant Eroticism: The ART+Positive Archives

This book is the first survey of the art and practice of Art+Positive, a significant affinity group of ACT UP New York during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Staging self-initiated actions, and also participating in larger demonstrations organized by ACT UP, Art+Positive practiced an improvisational approach to activism at the intersection of the AIDS crisis and the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Art+Positive archives, assembled by Hunter Reynolds in the mid-1990s, were out of public view for more than twenty years. Art collector and HIV/AIDS researcher Dr. Daniel Berger acquired the group’s archives in early 2015. Shortly thereafter, he and artist John Neff presented an exhibition of the archives at Iceberg Projects, Chicago. Militant Eroticism: The ART+Positive Archives, published by Sternberg Press, documents that exhibition and is extensively illustrated with artworks, documents, protest ephemera and meeting notes from the Art+Positive archives. Also included are essays by Berger, Neff and former ACT UP member and scholar Debra Levine. These essays are presented alongside previously unpublished writings by Ray Navarro, Hunter Reynolds and David Wojnarowicz.

Presented in partnership with Sternberg Press.

2:00–3:00pm — The Underground Railroad Imaginary

Panelists: Dawoud Bey (Artist | Stephen Daiter Gallery, Rena Bransten Gallery), Leigh Raiford (Associate Professor | Department of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley) and Steven Nelson (Professor | African and African American Art, Department of Art History, UCLA). Moderated by Michelle Grabner (Artist | James Cohan, Professor, Painting and Drawing | SAIC, Curator | FRONT International).

This discussion centers on the occasion of the newest commissioned work by 2017 MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey, entitled Night Coming Tenderly, Black, on view as part of FRONT International, the Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. Installed in St. John's Episcopal Church, a stop on the Underground Railroad in the nineteenth century, Bey’s recent series of photographs evoke the imagined experience of escaped slaves. Through brooding photographic prints, Bey seeks to reconstruct the experience of moving through a strange city and landscape under cover of night. In conversation with scholars Leigh Raiford and Steven Nelson, and moderated by Curator of FRONT International Michelle Grabner, this discussion expands on the artist's continued interest in the ways in which history can be engaged, invoked and materialized in the contemporary moment in relation to African American history and experience.

Presented in partnership with FRONT International and Observer.

3:00pm — Book Signing: Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply

With images ranging from Harlem in the 1970s and 2000s to photographs that commemorate the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, this volume offers a forty-year career retrospective of the MacArthur "Genius Grant" award-winning photographer Dawoud Bey.

Presented in partnership with the University of Texas Press and the Museum of Contemporary Art Store.

Exchange by Northern Trust

An Interactive Conversation Around the Art of Collecting

Located within the Northern Trust Anchor lounge, Exchange by Northern Trust: An Interactive Conversation Around the Art of Collecting features exclusive panels open to invited VIP guests. Highlights of the 2018 program include the previously announced Professionals Forum, the first of its kind in the United States. The Forum, presented by EXPO CHICAGO and Art Vérité, will provide professional and preventative specialist knowledge and skills as it relates to managing, selling and acquiring a contemporary collection. Additional highlights include conversations on the future of the online art market and a panel with the recipient institution of the Northern Trust Purchase Prize on the making of a museum collection, following the unveiling of this special acquisition from the EXPOSURE section curated by Justine Ludwig (Executive Director, Creative Time) to the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.

Northern Trust Anchor Lounge Schedule

Friday, September 28

Professionals Forum

10:00—11:00am — Dealer and Professional Panel: Contract is King: Due Diligence and Reducing Problems in Art Dealing

• Dealers Can Protect Themselves: Case Studies | Panelist: Chris Robinson, Cahill, Cossu, Noh & Robinson, LLP
• Fakes and Forgeries and Consignment Fraud: Case Studies | Panelist: Judd Grossman, Grossman, LLP
• Clearing the Way: Legal Title and Dealer Due Diligence: Case Studies | Panelist: Kevin Ray, Greenburg Traurig, LLP (Chicago-based)
• Criminal Case Studies: Dealer-to-Dealer Relationships | Panelist: Laura Patten, FBI Senior Intelligence Analyst, Art Crime Team, Deloitte

1:00–2:00pm — Caveat Emptor: Equipping Collectors and Art Professionals

• Stolen Art: Jasper Johns Case | Panelist: Judd Grossman, Grossman, LLP
• Case Study: Authenticity, Provence and Other Issues | Panelist: Dr. Sharon Flescher, Executive Director of IFAR, and Editor-in-Chief of the IFAR Journal
• Scientific Analysis and Forensic Surprises | Panelist: Jennifer Mass, Ph.D. and President Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, LLC
• Diligence: Transparency vs. Opacity | Panelist: Andrea Danese, CEO and President, Athena Art Finance

3:00–4:00pm — Safeguarding Your Rights: What Artists and Collectors Need to Know

• Art Consignment | Panelist: Rebecca Woan, Principal and Funder, Chartwell Insurance Services
• VARA: 5 Pointz Case | Panelist: Barry Werbin, Herrick Feinstein LLP
• Artist and Owners: Understanding Your Intellectual Property Rights: Case Studies | Panelist: Chris Robinson, Cahill, Cossu, Noh & Robinson, LLP
• Importance of Clear Title, Provenance, and Authenticity | Panelist: Mac MacLellan, Executive Vice President, Wealth Management, Northern Trust

Sponsors include GreenbergTraurig, Chartwell Insurance and Grossman, LLP.

Saturday, September 29

1:00–2:00pm — Contemporary Collectors Series

Panelists: Mamadou-Abou Sarr (Collector) and Catherine Sarr (Collector). Moderated by Franklin Sirmans (Director | Pérez Art Museum Miami).

With a large focus on contemporary photography—from works by iconic artists such as Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Deborah Willis, Dawoud Bey, James Barnor, Samuel Fosso and Iké Udé, to the younger generation, such as Deana Lawson, LaToya Ruby Frazier (Associate Professor, Photography | SAIC), Ayana Jackson and Zanele Muholi—the Mamadou-Abou and Catherine Sarr collection spans over seventy years of production, crossing over into mediums of painting and sculpture. This conversation will focus on their contemporary collection, in addition to one of the largest holdings of original etchings from the 1700s, which trace the chronological documentation of Senegal and representations of African kingdoms.

3:00–4:00pm — Investing in Individual Artists | The Chicago Community Trust

Panelists: Deana Haggag (President and CEO | United States Artists), Shawn M. Donnelley (President, Strategic Giving and Executive Committee Member | The Chicago Community Trust) and Edward Hirsch (President | John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation). Moderated by Tim Bresnahan (Senior Director of Gift Planning | The Chicago Community Trust).

This discussion will focus on how collectors, organizations and individual philanthropists can directly support artists. Discussion will look at the constraints on charitable giving, as well as how these funds have impacted both artists’ careers and projects.  

Presented in partnership with Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.

5:00–6:00pm — Desert X: In Conversation

Panelists: Neville Wakefield (Artistic Director | Desert X), Amanda Hunt (Co-Curator | Desert X, Director of Education & Public Programs | Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), and Matthew Schum (Co-Curator | Desert X, Los Angeles-based Independent Writer and Curator).

This conversation precedes the second iteration of Desert X (February 9–April 21, 2019), the recurring contemporary art exhibition that activates California's desert landscape through site-specific installations by renowned international contemporary artists. As with the inaugural iteration, Desert X 2019 takes its cues from the landscape—social, political, environmental—that shapes its surroundings. The exhibition is non-prescriptive in the sense that it is open to the audience to discover it, as it continues to explore ideas of site-specificity, the frame of post-institutional art and the interactive possibilities that attend it.

Sunday, September 30

1:00–2:00pm — Making a University Museum: Smart Museum of Art

Panelists: Alison Gass (Dana Feitler Director | Smart Museum of Art) and Jill Ingrassia-Zingales (Member of the Smart Museum of Art’s Board of Governors). Moderated by Sarah Thornton (Author and Sociologist of Culture).

Join us for a panel discussing the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, the recipient of the Northern Trust Purchase Prize. The conversation will explore the role contemporary art plays at university museums nationwide and the Smart’s current collection and acquisitions strategy moving forward. The panelists will also discuss the specific impact of the newly purchased work from the EXPOSURE section curated by Justine Ludwig.