Art and Culture Talks
2007
Marjorie L. and Ronald E. Brandon Art and Culture Talks

ACT programs will be held at the museum and other campus locations as specified.
For more information, call (518) 442-4035.
All programs are free and open to the public.

Peter Saul is one of the most influential artists of the last forty years. His visceral, acid colored canvases are inspired equally by Pop art, Cubism, Surrealism, and Mad Magazine. Coming of age in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Saul has remained an unrelenting critic of the economic and moral forces that move our society. He continues to influence new generations of contemporary artists who share the long-standing artistic tradition of social criticism and satire.

Saul has exhibited worldwide in numerous galleries, museums, and institutions. Most recently he has had solo exhibitions at Musée Paul Valéry in Sète, France, and Musée d’art moderne et contemporain in Geneva, Switzerland. His work was recently included in Disparities and Deformities: Our Grotesque, Site Santa Fe, and Splat, Boom, Pow at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

Supported by a grant from University Auxiliary Services.

Tuesday, February 27
7:00 p.m.
University Art Museum
Reading and discussion by cultural historian
Michael Kammen.


Michael Kammen's most recent book, Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture (2006), examines the key debates about aesthetics and morality that have shaped a distinctively American view of art’s role in a democratic society. The author and editor of more than thirty books, Kammen received the Pulitzer Prize for People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Culture (1972).

Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University, where he has been on the faculty since 1965. His other books include A Time to Every Purpose:The Four Seasons in American
Culture (2004); Robert Gwathmey: The Life and Art of a Passionate Observer (1999); American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and theTwentieth Century (1999); In the Past Lane: Historical Perspectives on American Culture (1997); and A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture (1986).

Co-sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.

Sina Najafi, creator and editor-in chief of Cabinet Magazine will talk about the magazine’s new book, Presidential Doodles:Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles and Scrawls from the Oval Office (2006). Featuring drawings by U.S. presidents of nearly every era, the book provides a rare glimpse into the private personalities of America's most famous men. Highlights include a diagram of the Pythagorean theorem by a young John Adams and numerous cowboy cartoons drawn by Ronald Reagan on White House stationery.

Najafi has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, and Stockholm University. He has also been a visiting lecturer at Columbia University, the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, Tyler School of Art, Hampshire College, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Tate Modern in London. He holds degrees in comparative literature from Princeton University and Columbia University and is currently completing a dissertation in comparative literature at New York University. Cabinet Magazine is a quarterly not-for-profit publication, now in its seventh year.

Co-sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.

Lynne Tillman is a fiction writer, essayist, art critic, and educator. Her latest novel, American Genius, A Comedy (2006), dismantles American myths, past and present, through the obsessions, fears, and doubts of an unnamed woman. Tillman is also the author of This Is Not It (2002), a series of short stories written in collaboration with visual artists; No Lease on Life (a NewYork Times Notable Book of 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Critics CircleAward); Cast in Doubt (1992); The Madame Realism Complex (1992); Motion Sickness (1991); and Haunted Houses (1987). She is also the author of two collections of essays, The Broad Picture (1997) and Absence Makes the Heart (1990), as well as The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967 (1994), with photographs by Stephen Shore.

Tillman is Professor/Writer in Residence at the University at Albany, and in 2006 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has taught writing and visual art at Yale University, Bard College, and elsewhere.

Co-sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and held in conjunction with the University Art Museum exhibition Mr. President, for which Tillman is the catalogue essayist.

Wednesday, September 5
7:00 p.m.
University Art Museum
In Conversation: Geoffrey Young and James Siena

Geoffrey Youngand James Siena will discuss their collaboration on a new edition of Pockets of Wheat, first published in 1996 featuring poems by Young and drawings by Siena, many of which are featured in the museum’s current exhibition.

The rapport between Siena and Young is akin to musicians communicating through their instruments. They bring to the reader not something better than they could solo, but something different. 
Gary Counsil, The Brooklyn Rail

Co-sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute. Supported by a grant from University Auxiliary Services.

Wednesday, September 26
7:00 p.m.
University Art Museum
Lecture by Judith Linhares

Linhares’s paintings have the vivid instantaneousness of dreams, in which you see everything in a split-second, more clearly and starkly than in waking life. 
David Pagel

Supported by a grant from University Auxiliary Services.

Both programs are held in conjunction with the exhibitions Judith Linhares: New Works  and BIG FAST INK: James Siena Drawings, 1996-2007 (through September 30, 2007)

Curated by Geoffrey Young, poet, critic, and founder of Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Friday, November 9
7:00 p.m.
University Art Museum
Tiger Tales performed by Chinese Theatre Works

Tiger Tales blends ancient and contemporary techniques in a comical story of survival in the modern jungle. Tiger Tales is performed in English accompanied by traditional Chinese music, and is suitable for all ages.

Saturday, November 10
noon and 2:00 p.m.
University Art Museum
Overhead Projector Shadow Puppetry Workshops
conducted by Chinese Theatre Works

These workshops will guide participants through the entire process of planning, designing, building and performing a 2-5 minute shadow figure production. Participants will create brief shadow performances using a range of materials (cardstock, acetate, wire, fabric scraps, gel, found objects, kitchen utensils, toys, and more).

The Chinese Theatre Works is the only professional Chinese shadow theater company in the United States.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition Chinese Shadow Figures from the Collection of Dr. Fan Pen Chen (November 2, 2007 – January 6, 2008)

Saturday, December 8
2:00 p.m.
University Art Museum
Puppet Theatre in Folk Ritual Activities in Fujian, lecture by Mingsheng Ye

A foremost authority on Chinese puppetry, particularly on popular religion, culture and puppetry in Fujian, Mingsheng Ye has published eleven books and more than eighty articles in top academic journals. One of his more recent works is a momentous, two-volume book titled, History of Puppetry in Fujian on the shadow theatre, marionette theatre, and glove puppetry of Fujian.

Supported by the China Center Initiative through the Department of East Asian Studies.