Jan 19, 2016 | Essay, From the Chair
Contemporary Art is that art made by our contemporaries. Arthur Danto The quote above is a definition of contemporary art. There are many definitions, but this one is almost perfect. It is ahistorical; not tied to a particular set of dates. It is open and flexible; ie...
Dec 15, 2015 | Essay, From the Chair
Why Make Art? In the last decade, Art, especially as a subject in higher education, has been re-purposed as a part of “creative commerce” or as an “economic engine”, capable of contributing and playing a part in what American economist,...
Dec 7, 2015 | Essay, From the Chair
Knife attack confused for performance art at Art Basel Miami Beach CNN, December 7, 2015 This troubling headline was sent to me by Barbara Hennessey, chair of our Board of Visitors. It seems that nearby patrons of Art Basel initially thought the incident was a work of...
Nov 30, 2015 | Essay, From the Chair
Opening the Sunday New York Times this weekend, I was struck by the front-page article with the following title, “The March into the Museum, Black Artists, Long Neglected, Join and Expanding Canon.” As the article resonated with the lecture that I was already planning...
Nov 23, 2015 | Essay, From the Chair
As the 21st century progresses, the narrative that we are telling in our teaching and mentoring gets more crowded. Movements come and go more quickly, the politics of the era become increasingly more complex, information flows more quickly (there is simply more of it)...
Nov 17, 2015 | Essay, From the Chair
In the aftermath of the attacks in Paris, I began to ponder how such global catastrophes influence the way we think about art. It occurs to me that movements in art have, since the earliest days of Modernism, reacted to such crises with manifestos, objects, ephemera...
