New Approaches to Presenting American Art
Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave.
212-535-7710 Price:
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Join international scholars, curators, and contemporary artists for discussions and presentations related to the New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, and other recently opened American art museums, wings, and galleries, from Boston to Bentonville. Free with Museum admission; reservations and tickets are not required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
10:00 a.m.
Welcome and Introduction
Thomas P. Campbell, Director and Chief Executive Officer, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Morrison H. Heckscher, Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman of the American Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
10:15 a.m.
Keynote Address: What Makes American Art American?
Adam Gopnik, author and staff writer, The New Yorker
Does American art really matter, or do we just want it to? Gopnik considers whether the importance of American art as a museum subject is simply a consequence of all the institutional energy that has been devoted to it, or whether it reflects real continuities and ongoing concerns.
11:00 a.m.
American Art in the Museum: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Headed?
Kathleen A. Foster, Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art and Director, Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Building new wings and refurbishing old galleries, American museums have undergone unprecedented expansion and renovation over the last two decades. Explore how this flowering of new facilities has cultivated new definitions and interpretations of American art.
11:30 a.m.
Putting American Art on an International Stage
Alan Wallach, Ralph H. Wark Professor of Art and Art History and Professor of American Studies Emeritus, College of William and Mary
Since 1970, American art history has expanded to a global perspective, international exhibitions of American art have proliferated, and pre-1945 American art has attracted increasing interest outside the United States. Wallach discusses these issues and how institutions such as the Terra Foundation for American Art and Tate Britain have encouraged the study of American art abroad.
12:15–2:15 p.m.
Independent viewing of the New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts with American Wing curators
2:15 p.m.
Afternoon Welcome and Introduction
Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, curator, the American Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2:30 p.m.
Democratic Vistas/Shadows on the Land
Moderator: Robert Storr, Professor of Painting and Dean of the School of Art, Yale University
Chuck Close, artist
Rackstraw Downes, artist
Kara Walker, artist
Many of the painters and poets who celebrated the founding of the United States saw unlimited prospects for prosperity and exalted the possibilities for self-government that Walt Whitman memorably named “Democratic Vistas.” Yet the actual unfolding of history and the contradictions inherent in the country’s make-up cast revealing shadows on the land. The artists on this panel discuss their views of America and the legacy of its art from the vantage point of their own work.
3:30 p.m.
Material Culture as Cultural Material: A Conversation
Moderator: Glenn Adamson, Head of Research, Victoria and Albert Museum
Josiah McElheny, artist
Roy McMakin, artist
Allison Smith, artist
As appropriation becomes increasingly mainstream, it has grown more and more vital to consider what happens when artifact becomes art. This conversation focuses on the use of historical decorative arts in contemporary practice, both as found objects and as images.
This program is made possible by The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts.
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