CAA News Today
Marlene Park: In Memoriam
posted Aug 03, 2010
Herbert R. Hartel Jr. is adjunct associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.
Marlene Park (photograph provided by William Park)
Marlene Park, an art historian and professor who specialized in twentieth-century American art and public art, who worked to preserve America’s public art for future generations, and who became an accomplished photographer in her later years, died suddenly on July 10, 2010, at the age of 78.
Park was born in Los Angeles on December 1, 1931. Her father, Warren Shobert, was a lawyer who worked for Paramount Studios. He claimed that he had met Marlene Dietrich on a stage set, and that she asked him to name his child after her, which is how Marlene’s name was apparently chosen. Park graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1953 with a major in merchandising. Not long after, while working in New York, she took a course at Columbia University that inspired her to pursue graduate study in art history. She received her MA and PhD in art history from Columbia, where she specialized in medieval art and studied with Meyer Schapiro. Her dissertation was a study of the Crucifix of Fernando and Sancha, an ivory sculpture from 1063 that is in the National Archeological Museum in Madrid. In 1958, she married William Park, who later became a professor of English at Sarah Lawrence College, and together they had two children. She was a professor of art history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY), from 1968 until 2000, and served on the faculty in the PhD Program in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center for over twenty years.
Once at John Jay, Park took a path similar to Schapiro as her scholarly efforts shifted from medieval art to American art. A pioneering scholar of 1930s government-supported art and American public art, she coauthored two books with her John Jay colleague Gerald Markowitz: New Deal for Art: The Government Art Projects of the 1930s with Examples from New York City and State (1977) and Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal (1984). She also wrote numerous essays and articles on New York post-office murals, images of lynching in the 1930s, and artists Blanche Lazzell and Stanton Macdonald-Wright. In the 1980s Park was president of the Public Art Preservation Committee, based in New York. In this capacity, she worked to preserve important examples of public art, including the murals at the Rincon Annex Post Office in San Francisco.
As a member of CUNY’s art-history faculty, Park taught courses on American art of the 1930s, American art between the World Wars, public art in the United States, and American women sculptors. She opened the eyes of many students, introducing them to wonderful but little-known artists who became exciting topics for research papers and dissertations. I was one of many to benefit from this inspiration and guidance, and the list of those who similarly benefited is impossibly long to enumerate. Park cultivated enthusiasm for American modernist art among her students with an uncommon sense of caring and nurturing; she adeptly led them to serious, respected, and useful scholarship. She knew how to encourage and guide her students, to make them scholars while caring about them as people. In turn, her students had the utmost appreciation and regard for her. She embodied the ideal that art history is a humanistic academic endeavor.
Years spent documenting public art across the United States initiated and developed Park’s interest in photography as an art form. Many of her photographs of public art transformed themselves from documentation to artistic statements in their own right, and did so in that quietly thoughtful way that was uniquely Marlene. Upon retiring she and her husband moved to Santa Cruz, where she continued to spend time with her children and grandchildren. Devoting herself to photography, she created beautiful works in which she observed and recorded everyday life, the landscape of northern-central California, wildlife, and mechanical forms. In her seventies she learned the complexities of digital photography. Her photographs have been exhibited at Sarah Lawrence College, the Santa Cruz Art League, and elsewhere, and can be seen at www.marlenepark.com. Park exhibited her work often and acquired an impressive reputation as a serious and talented photographer. She also became very active in the art scene in Santa Cruz. Park’s decade of retirement was a model of how one can be productive and creative in those later years. She proved that although we must get older, we do not have to become stale. On the day she died, she attended the opening of a juried exhibition that included one of her photographs. I think Marlene left us after what was a very good day for her, a day spent doing what she loved, and for that we should be grateful.
Park is survived by her husband William, her children Catharine and William, her stepsons Jonathan and Geoffrey, and nine grandchildren. She will truly be missed by family, friends, colleagues, and former students, but will live on in her family, scholarship, photography, and the new generations of art historians she educated.
New Faces for CAA Journals
posted Aug 03, 2010
New appointments have been made to the editorial boards of two of CAA’s three scholarly journals.
Sheryl Reiss, lecturer in art history at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has been appointed the next editor-in-chief of caa.reviews, succeeding Lucy Oakley of the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. Reiss will begin her three-year term on July 1, 2011, with the preceding year as editor designate. Reiss had previously served on the caa.reviews Editorial Board from 2001 to 2005, and was also a field editor for books on early modern art in southern Europe.
Joining the caa.reviews Editorial Board for the next four years is Conrad Rudolph of the University of California, Riverside. In addition, five new field editors for books and related media have been chosen this year: Christopher Heuer of Princeton University in New Jersey will assign reviews in northern European art, and Tomoko Sakomura of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania will do likewise for Japanese art. Marika Sardar of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is field editor for books on Islamic art, Yekaterina Barbash of the Brooklyn Museum in New York will commission reviews on Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern art, and Christina Kiaer is in charge of books on twentieth-century art. Field editors work with caa.reviews for three years.
At Art Journal, Jenni Sorkin has joined the editorial board for a four-year term. Formerly a faculty member at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, she recently received her PhD from Yale University. In 2010–11 Sorkin will be a postdoctoral residential fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. The editorial board also has a new chair, appointed from within its ranks: Karin Higa, director of the Curatorial and Exhibitions Department and senior curator of art at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, will serve for two years.
All editors and editorial-board members are chosen from an open call for nominations and self-nominations, published in at least two issues of CAA News (usually January and March) and on the CAA website.
Summer Obituaries in the Arts
posted Aug 02, 2010
CAA recognizes the lives and achievements of the following artists, scholars, photographers, collectors, museum directors, and other important figures in the visual arts. Of particular interest is a thoughtful text on the art historian and public-art preservationist Marlene Park, written especially for CAA by her colleague Herbert R. Hartel Jr.
- Katia Bassanini, a Swiss artist based in Lugano and New York who worked in video, drawing, performance, and sculpture, died on July 20, 2010. She was 40
- Thomas S. Buechner, founding director of the Corning Museum of Glass in 1950 and head of the Brooklyn Museum during the 1960s, died on June 13, 2010, at age 83
- Nicolas Carone, an Abstract Expressionist painter and founding member of the New York Studio School, where he taught for almost twenty-five years, died on July 15, 2010. He was 93
- Joe Deal, an American landscape photographer included in the influential New Topographics exhibition in 1975, died on June 18, 2010, at the age of 62. A longtime teacher and administrator, he was a member of the CAA Board of Directors from 1997 to 2001, serving as secretary for the last two years.
- Daniele Di Castro, an art historian and director of the Jewish Museum of Rome, died on June 25, 2010
- Harry Eccleston, artist, president of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, and chief designer for the Bank of England, where he created the pictorial Series D banknotes, died on April 30, 2010. He was 87
- Carola Hicks, art historian, biographer, and author of books on the Bayeux Tapestry and the stained-glass windows of King’s College Chapel, died on June 23, 2010. She was 68
- Stephen Kanner, architect and cofounder of the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, died on July 2, 2010, at the age of 54
- Rudolf Leopold, an Austrian ophthalmologist and art collector who focused on twentieth-century art from his country, died on June 29, 2010, at age 85. He was known for popularizing Egon Schiele through several books
- Jim Marshall, a photographer who took classic portraits of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, and other sixties icons, died on March 24, 2010, at the age of 74
- Eleanor R. Morse, an art collector and founder of the Salvador Dalí Museum in Florida, died on July 1, 2010, at the age of 97
- Marlene Park, an artist historian of twentieth-century American art, a public-art preservationist, and a photographer, died on July 10, 2010, at age 78. Read a special text on her by Herbert R. Hartel Jr.
- Harvey Pekar, author of the critically praised comic-book series American Splendor, died on July 12, 2010, at the age of 70
- Rammellzee, a pioneer of graffiti art and hip-hop music in New York, died on June 27, 2010. He was 49
- Helene Zucker Seeman, writer, teacher, and director of the Art Acquisition Program for Prudential Life Insurance for many years, died on June 27, 2010. She was 60 years old
- Robert Shapazian, art dealer, publisher of artist’s books, and founding director of the Californian branch of Gagosian Gallery, died on June 19, 2010, at age 67
- Jan-Erik von Löwenadler, a Swedish art dealer and collector who staged exhibitions internationally, died on July 24, 2010, at the age of 74
- Richard Walker, art historian, cataloguer, and adviser to the Government Art Collection in the United Kingdom, died on May 6, 2010. He was 93
- Wu Guanzhong, a painter and teacher who is widely considered among the most important and influential in twentieth-century Chinese art, died on June 25, 2010. He was 91
Read all past obituaries in the arts on the CAA website.
August Picks from CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts
posted Jul 29, 2010
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts produces a curated list, called CWA Picks, of recommended exhibitions and events related to feminist art and scholarship from North America and around the world.
The CWA Picks for August 2010 include two exhibitions of folk art: works by American women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries presented at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, and by contemporary practitioners from around the world, displayed at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Columbia College Chicago is hosting a panel of five women at the forefront of gaming theory and practice, called “3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender.” Lastly, closing this month at the Guggenheim Museum in New York is an exhibition devoted to the art-education practices of Hilla Rebay, the first curator and director of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting.
Check out past CWA Picks archived at the bottom of the page, as exhibitions highlighted in previous months are often still on view.
Artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison Will Speak at Convocation at the 2011 Centennial Conference
posted Jul 23, 2010
Dear colleagues,
It is with great pleasure that I announce the keynote speakers for Convocation at CAA’s Centennial Conference in New York: the artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. This event, free and open to the public, will take place in February 2011.
The Harrisons are interdisciplinary, collaborative, multimedia, environmental, educational, activist, visionary, ethical, and humane. They exemplify many aspects of contemporary artistic practice and speak to numerous concerns of the CAA membership.
I first met Newton in the early 1990s: he was a visiting artist when I was a graduate student in Indiana. (I also met Helen years later at a gallery reception in Colorado.) He left a tremendous impression on me as someone with a truly perceptive mind, possessing the foresight, talent, and determination to create visually compelling art on a scale that makes a positive difference in life on our planet. The Harrisons have been doing this for over forty years. His and Helen’s concept of the individual contributing to the elevation of a collective “conversational drift” resonates today more than ever.
For more information on the Harrisons and their work, please visit their website. Other great sources include the New York Art World, Ronald Feldman Gallery, which represents the artists, Left Matrix, and the Community Arts Network, which republishes an essay on the artists by Arlene Raven.
I’d like to thank Sue Gollifer, CAA vice president for Annual Conference, for her thoughtful consultation with me about potential speakers, and Emmanuel Lemakis, CAA director of programs, for his assistance with confirming and making arrangements for our honored guests.
Please join me in welcoming the Harrisons and spreading the word about our good fortune to have them address CAA as keynote speakers for our 2011 Convocation.
Sincerely,
Barbara Nesin, MFA
President, College Art Association
Department Chair of Art Foundations, Art Institute of Atlanta
Batya Tamar Studio at the Arts Exchange
CAA Joins Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Review Appellate Decision That Only “Great” Art Is Protected by the First Amendment
posted Jul 22, 2010
CAA joined with artists and other arts-support organizations in filing an amicus brief asking the US Supreme Court to grant a petition to review a case involving an artwork removed from public view in San Marcos, Texas. In that case, Kleinman v. City of San Marcos, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the First Amendment only protects “great” works of art.
The brief explains how this new, “great” art standard is inconsistent with the First Amendment and would give governments the ability to ban disfavored art and contemporary art that has not yet become iconic. It points out that whether art is “great” art is not susceptible to an objective, value-neutral determination, but would require courts to act as art critics based on expert evidence of what constitutes “greatness” in art. The brief also highlights a number of examples of artists and art whose work was not initially regarded as “great,” but only became so over time. For all of these reasons, the brief argues, the new and unprecedented “great” art standard of the Fifth Circuit is troubling, and the Supreme Court should review and reverse the appellate decision.
Background
In the city of San Marcos, Texas, participants at a charity event for the opening of a store, Planet K, were invited to smash up an old car. The car was then converted into a cactus planter and painted on the exterior by two local artists, with scenes from San Marcos, abstract designs, and the phrase “Make Love, Not War.” The stated intention of one of the petitioners, Michael Kleinman, organizer of the event and owner of the store, was always to turn the wrecked car into an artwork. The resulting artwork was displayed on private property (the Planet K parking lot) and was easily visible to the public from thoroughfares.
A San Marcos ordinance prohibits, as a public nuisance, any display of a “junked vehicle” that can been seen by the public. Based on the First Amendment—that their artwork is protected speech—Kleinman and the artists sued the city, to enjoin it from applying the ordinance to their artwork. The US District Court for the Western District of Texas found for the city. The court held that the ordinance did not violate the First Amendment, as applied to plaintiffs’ artwork, because they had alternative avenues of communicating their message.
This past February, the Fifth Circuit affirmed that decision. It first questioned whether the wrecked car/planter/artwork could be considered constitutionally protected expression. In particular, the appeals court read a prior Supreme Court decision to indicate that the First Amendment protects only “great” works of art, and that the Supreme Court has not otherwise set out the First Amendment framework to be applied to visual works of art. The Fifth Circuit also went on to hold that even if the First Amendment did apply in this case, under prevailing standards the city’s nuisance law could apply to the artwork. After the decision of the Fifth Circuit, the city seized and removed—but has not yet destroyed—the artwork.
The artists filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, requesting that the court review the decision of the Fifth Circuit. There are several grounds for the petition, one of which is that “great art” should not be the test for whether an artwork is protected by the First Amendment.
First Amendment protection for works of art has long been a core concern of CAA and important to its advocacy program. In the last Supreme Court term, CAA joined the National Coalition Against Censorship in filing an amicus brief in the case of United States v. Stevens. In that case, the Supreme Court ultimately held, 8–0, that the federal statute criminalizing depictions of animal cruelty violated the First Amendment, agreeing with the position taken by CAA in its brief. Earlier, CAA joined an amicus brief in the NEA Four case (National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley), in which the Supreme Court ultimately held, in 1998, that it was not unconstitutional for Congress to mandate that the National Endowment for the Arts take into account “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public” when funding artists.
Other Signers to the Brief
The amicus brief to which CAA is a party was filed on July 8, 2010. The other signers are: Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts; Volunteer Lawyers and Professionals for the Arts (formerly Tennessee Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts); Northwest Lawyers and Artists (Portland, Oregon); Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; ArtCar Fest; the artist historian Douglas Nickel; and artists Butch Hancock, Kelly Lyles, Leo Aston, Alan Pogue, Jan D. Elftman, Philo Northrup, Harrod Blank, Emily Duffy, and Graydon Parrish.
Downloads
Download a PDF of the Kleinman amicus brief. A second PDF contains the petition for certiorari, the District Court and Fifth Circuit opinions, and, at the end of the file, photographs of the artwork in question.
CAA Joins Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Review Appellate Decision That Only “Great” Art Is Protected by the First Amendment
posted Jul 22, 2010
CAA joined with artists and other arts-support organizations in filing an amicus brief asking the US Supreme Court to grant a petition to review a case involving an artwork removed from public view in San Marcos, Texas. In that case, Kleinman v. City of San Marcos, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the First Amendment only protects “great” works of art.
The brief explains how this new, “great” art standard is inconsistent with the First Amendment and would give governments the ability to ban disfavored art and contemporary art that has not yet become iconic. It points out that whether art is “great” art is not susceptible to an objective, value-neutral determination, but would require courts to act as art critics based on expert evidence of what constitutes “greatness” in art. The brief also highlights a number of examples of artists and art whose work was not initially regarded as “great,” but only became so over time. For all of these reasons, the brief argues, the new and unprecedented “great” art standard of the Fifth Circuit is troubling, and the Supreme Court should review and reverse the appellate decision.
Background
In the city of San Marcos, Texas, participants at a charity event for the opening of a store, Planet K, were invited to smash up an old car. The car was then converted into a cactus planter and painted on the exterior by two local artists, with scenes from San Marcos, abstract designs, and the phrase “Make Love, Not War.” The stated intention of one of the petitioners, Michael Kleinman, organizer of the event and owner of the store, was always to turn the wrecked car into an artwork. The resulting artwork was displayed on private property (the Planet K parking lot) and was easily visible to the public from thoroughfares.
A San Marcos ordinance prohibits, as a public nuisance, any display of a “junked vehicle” that can been seen by the public. Based on the First Amendment—that their artwork is protected speech—Kleinman and the artists sued the city, to enjoin it from applying the ordinance to their artwork. The US District Court for the Western District of Texas found for the city. The court held that the ordinance did not violate the First Amendment, as applied to plaintiffs’ artwork, because they had alternative avenues of communicating their message.
This past February, the Fifth Circuit affirmed that decision. It first questioned whether the wrecked car/planter/artwork could be considered constitutionally protected expression. In particular, the appeals court read a prior Supreme Court decision to indicate that the First Amendment protects only “great” works of art, and that the Supreme Court has not otherwise set out the First Amendment framework to be applied to visual works of art. The Fifth Circuit also went on to hold that even if the First Amendment did apply in this case, under prevailing standards the city’s nuisance law could apply to the artwork. After the decision of the Fifth Circuit, the city seized and removed—but has not yet destroyed—the artwork.
The artists filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, requesting that the court review the decision of the Fifth Circuit. There are several grounds for the petition, one of which is that “great art” should not be the test for whether an artwork is protected by the First Amendment.
First Amendment protection for works of art has long been a core concern of CAA and important to its advocacy program. In the last Supreme Court term, CAA joined the National Coalition Against Censorship in filing an amicus brief in the case of United States v. Stevens. In that case, the Supreme Court ultimately held, 8–0, that the federal statute criminalizing depictions of animal cruelty violated the First Amendment, agreeing with the position taken by CAA in its brief. Earlier, CAA joined an amicus brief in the NEA Four case (National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley), in which the Supreme Court ultimately held, in 1998, that it was not unconstitutional for Congress to mandate that the National Endowment for the Arts take into account “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public” when funding artists.
Other Signers to the Brief
The amicus brief to which CAA is a party was filed on July 8, 2010. The other signers are: Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts; Volunteer Lawyers and Professionals for the Arts (formerly Tennessee Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts); Northwest Lawyers and Artists (Portland, Oregon); Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; ArtCar Fest; the artist historian Douglas Nickel; and artists Butch Hancock, Kelly Lyles, Leo Aston, Alan Pogue, Jan D. Elftman, Philo Northrup, Harrod Blank, Emily Duffy, and Graydon Parrish.
Downloads
Download a PDF of the Kleinman amicus brief. A second PDF contains the petition for certiorari, the District Court and Fifth Circuit opinions, and, at the end of the file, photographs of the artwork in question.
July 2010 Issue of CAA News Published
posted Jul 21, 2010
The July 2010 issue of CAA News just been published. You may download a PDF of it immediately.
Introduced by Andrea Kirsh, CAA’s vice president of external affairs, the July newsletter brings you up to date on all CAA programs and services. It also includes an interview with James Sloss Ackerman, a celebrated professor of Renaissance architecture, and updates on the future of the Bibliography of the History of Art.
In addition, the July issue solicits your participation in the two upcoming Centennial Conferences in New York (2011) and Los Angeles (2012). For Los Angeles, CAA continues to accept your session proposals through an online process, and an article provides full details on the process. For New York, CAA invites artists to submit video documentation of performance work for the ARTspace Media Lounge, and the organizers of several panels—on Damien Hirst, the future of art history, and health and safety in the artist’s studio—want to hear from you.
The CAA News managing editor welcomes your submissions to the Endnotes section of the next issue. Please send listings for recent solo exhibitions, books published, and exhibitions curated, as well as news about your new position or your grant or fellowship, to Christopher Howard. Deadline: August 13, 2010.
Rose Art Museum to Lease Works from Its Collection
posted Jul 12, 2010
The latest development at Brandeis University, which early last year decided to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its prized collection of modern art, is to lease works from its collections through a partnership with the auction house Sotheby’s. Selling works from the museum to alleviate the school’s recession-shattered endowment, critics say, is not off the table. The Rose collection ranges from classics by Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg to more recent works by Dana Schutz, whose first museum exhibition was held at the Rose in 2006.
“The talks between Sotheby’s and Brandeis started a year ago,” writes Ellen Howards of the Boston Herald, but school officials cannot “predict which institutions might lease the art, which works could be made available or what sum a leasing deal would generate.”
A Boston Globe editorial proclaims that “Brandeis should only lend to institutions capable of caring for its artworks. And it should use any revenues to guarantee a future for the Rose.” In a bold statement, the paper also suggests that the university “deserves praise, not criticism, for trying to raise revenue through its collection.”
Geoff Edgars, also of the Boston Globe, offers recent precedents for the Rose’s controversial move: the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta have all rented artworks to other museums and institutions.
In addition, last week Brandeis announced the hiring of a new president, Frederick M. Lawrence, dean of George Washington University Law School. He will fill the position to be vacated by Jehuda Reinharz, who was responsible for the ill-fated idea to close the museum and sell its art, in January 2011.
Committee on Women in the Arts Picks for July 2010
posted Jul 10, 2010
Each month, CAA’s Committee on Women in the Arts singles out the best in feminist art and scholarship from North America and around the world. CWA Picks may include exhibitions, conferences, symposia, panels, lectures, and other events. The following selections should not be missed.
July 2010
June Wayne, The Chicago Territory, 1977, from The Dorothy Series (1975–79), lithograph on paper, 20 5/8 x 17 3/8 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts. Gift of the artist (artwork © June Wayne; photograph provided by National Museum of Women in the Arts)
June Wayne’s “Dorothy Series”
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005
June 25, 2010–September 13, 2010
The Dorothy Series (1975–79) by June Wayne was created in a hyperrealist style using photographs, documents, and scrapbook memorabilia. The artist created the set of lithographs to narrate the life of her mother, Dorothy, who raised her as a single parent, had a successful sales career, and staunchly campaigned for women’s rights. The Dorothy Series was created in collaboration with Ed Hamilton of Hamilton Press.
Born in 1918 in Chicago, Wayne had her first solo exhibition in 1935. A participant in the Works Progress Administration Easel Project in Chicago, she later moved to California where she studied lithography and founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1960. The CWA honored Wayne with an Annual Recognition Award in 2002.
Film Exhibition: Sally Potter
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
July 7–21, 2010
In the early 1970s, Sally Potter made avant-garde short films before moving on to experimental dramatic features that incorporate music, literature, dance, theater, and performance. She typically works on multiple elements of her films, from script and direction to sound design, editing, performance, and production. Potter’s films elegantly blend poetry and politics, give voice to women’s stories and romantic liaisons, and explore themes of desire and passion, self-expression, and the role of the individual in society. Films included in the program are her low-budget short, Thriller (1979); her first feature, The Gold Diggers (1983); Potter’s most critically acclaimed film, Orlando (1992); and RAGE (2009), her most recent project.
Jaroslava Brychtovà at the Glass Art Society in Seattle, 1990 (photograph by Russell Johnson and provided by the Pratt Fine Arts Center)
The Brychtovà Forum – Women Artists Working in Glass: Celebrating Innovation and Vision Across Generations
Seattle Art Museum and Pratt Fine Arts Center
1300 First Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101; and 1902 South Main Street, Seattle, WA 98144
July 15–18, 2010
Several prominent organizations from Seattle’s glass art community are collaborating to present “The Brychtovà Forum – Women Artists Working in Glass: Celebrating Innovation and Vision Across Generations,” a four-day series of free lectures, panel discussions, and events to be held July 15–18, 2010. The forum was conceived to celebrate the rich tradition of women working in glass while also recognizing the life and work of one of the most important artists in the history of the glass movement.
Jaroslava Brychtovà’s lecture, the cornerstone of the Brychtovà Forum, will be presented at the Seattle Art Museum on Thursday, July 15, accompanied by a new documentary by the Czech filmmaker Jiri Malek. The lecture will be followed by a reception and special exhibition curated by Sarah Traver opening across the street at the Traver Gallery. Panel discussions organized by three generations of leading glass artists—including Flora Mace, Shelley Muzylowski Allen, and Rebecca Chernow—will be presented at Seattle Art Museum throughout the day on Friday and on Saturday morning, all of which will be free and open to the public on Saturday afternoon. Also on Saturday afternoon, a glassblowing demonstration will take place at the Pratt Fine Arts Center (1902 South Main Street, Seattle, WA 98144; 206-328-2200; info@pratt.org). Admission to forum events is free but seating is limited; tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis upon registration.