The University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts in partnership with The Ford Family Foundation is pleased to announce the launch of the Curator and Critic Tours and Lectures program,  Connective Conversations | Inside Oregon Art 2011-2012. Connective Conversations is the seventh and final element of The Ford Family Foundation’s Visual Arts Program's Curator and Critic Tours and Lectures that invites professionals from outside the Northwest region to join in community conversations.

The 2011-2012 Connective Conversations program at the University of Oregon consists of lectures by art historian and art critic George Baker of UCLA; Helen Molesworth, former curator of contemporary art at the Harvard University Art Museum and current chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston; and a third tour in the fall of 2012 that will focus on communities outside the Portland metro area.

Lectures are free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come, first-seated basis. Registration is not required.

Follow Connective Conversations on Facebook.  We welcome your questions and comments--post to the Connective Conversations Facebook page and start a dialogue.
 

The next Connective Conversations are March 6 (Eugene) and March 8 (Portland)

HELEN MOLESWORTH |  "THIS WILL HAVE BEEN:  Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s"

This lecture coincides with Molesworth guest curating the exhibit,
"THIS WILL HAVE BEEN:  Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s" organized by the
Museum of Contemporary Art | Chicago and opening in February 2012.

IN THE NEWS
Read about Helen Molesworth and the exhibit she guest-curated:

"The Art Newspaper: THIS WILL HAVE BEEN...."
"This Will Have Been" at Walker
"Our Tiempo: This Will Have Been"
"This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics" at the MCA
"MCA Exhibit Looks Into Gay Rights in the 1980s"
Time Out Chicago on the MCA exhibit

6:00p.m.  |  TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2012  |  EUGENE, OREGON

5:30p.m.  |  THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012  |  PORTLAND, OREGON

[SEE LECTURE DETAILS BELOW]

Helen Molesworth is the current chief curator at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.  She has served as the head of the department of modern and contemporary art at The Harvard Art Museums where her exhibitions included "Long Life Cool White:  Photographs by Moyra Davey" and "ACT UP New York:  Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993."  She is also known for her work organizing Hauser & Wirth's reinterpretation of Allan Kaprow, Yard happening with William Pope. L, Josiah McElheny, and Sharon Hayes.  Prior to joining Harvard, Molesworth was chief curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for Arts in Columbus, Ohio. She holds a Ph.D. in the history of art from Cornell University.

A distinguished scholar, writer and curator, Molesworth will present her lecture, "This Will Have Been:  Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s" to audiences in both Eugene and Portland.  "This Will Have Been:  Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s" is an exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and guest curated by Molesworth.

The exhibit at the MCA Chicago opens on February 11, 2012 and is timed to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the first HIV/Aids deaths.  Today's political climate also seems an apt backdrop for the show, explains Molesworth.  "The crash of the market, the recession being the result of massive deregulation that began in the 1980s, and this raging battle for the conservative soul of America--they're all redolent of things that happened in the 80s," says Molesworth.  Her lecture will further illuminate this parallel as well as bring to the forefront the art of the exhibit which Molesworth describes as "very melancholic."

Molesworth has been called "a curatorial force...[who] combines keen intelligence, insight, scholarship and a distinctive vision for the history of and future for contemporary art."  She is lauded for her ability to inspire and delight art audiences and her propensity to connect audiences with art, ideas, history, and the joy of discovery.

For more information on Helen Molesworth, please see the following:
"The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston Appoints New Chief Curator," (January 13, 2010)
"Three Questions |  Helen Molesworth Speaks with Taylor Davis"

Information on the MCA Chicago exhibit is available on the following:
"The Art Newspaper:  THIS WILL HAVE BEEN...."
"This Will Have Been" at Walker
"Our Tiempo:  This Will Have Been"
"This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics" at the MCA
"MCA Exhibit Looks Into Gay Rights in the 1980s"
Time Out Chicago on the MCA exhibit

Lecture Details:

In Portland

Thursday, March 8, 2012, 5:30p.m. | Reception to follow
University of Oregon in Portland
White Stag Block | Event Room
70 NW Couch Street | Portland  Oregon  97209
For more information, contact Kirsten Poulsen-House, 503-412-3718, email kpoulsen@uoregon.edu

In Eugene

The Fowler Lecture

Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 6:00p.m.
University of Oregon, Eugene campus
1190 Franklin Boulevard | Eugene  Oregon  97403
For more information, contact Heidi Howes, 541-346-3610, email hhowes@uoregon.edu

Previous Connective Conversation Lectures:

GEORGE BAKER

NOVEMBER 3, 2011  |  PORTLAND, OREGON

NOVEMBER 7, 2011  |  SALEM, OREGON

NOVEMBER 10, 2011  |  EUGENE, OREGON

George Baker, professor of art history at UCLA, author, editor of October magazine, and critic for Artforum. Baker has been called “one of the leading scholars in modern and contemporary art of his generation” and is internationally lauded as a modernist who seamlessly engages with contemporary art.   Professor Baker launched the Connective Conversations Curator and Critic Tours and Lecture series with his November 3, 2011 lecture, "Paul Thek: Notes from the Underground."

Professor Baker will be delivering two lecture topics at three different locations as a part of Connective Conversations.

“Paul Thek: Notes from the Underground”
Paul Thek (1933-1988) was an American sculptor, painter, and installation artist who paved the way for artists adopting collaborative strategies. This lecture will be presented at both the University of Oregon in Portland and at Willamette University in Salem.

University of Oregon, Portland, Oregon
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Reception 5:30pm | Lecture 6:30pm
The White Stag Event Room
School of Architecture and Allied Arts, University of Oregon in Portland
70 NW Couch Street | Portland | Oregon 97209
Campus Map and Parking
For more information contact Kirsten Poulsen-House, 503-412-3718 kpoulsen@uoregon.edu

Willamette University, Salem, Oregon
Monday, November 7, 2011
Lecture 7:30pm
Paulus Lecture Hall, E-201
College of Law, Willamette University
245 Winter Street SE | Salem | Oregon 97301
Campus Map and Parking
This is a Hogue-Sponenburgh Art Lecture. | For more information contact Abigail Susik, 503-370-6124, asusik@willamette.edu
  

“Photography’s Expanded Field: The Work of Sharon Lockhart”
Part of Baker’s increasing oeuvre is his forthcoming Lateness and Longing: On the Afterlife of Photography. In this book he delves into the photography and cinematography of Sharon Lockhart. Lockhart explores social subject matter in her work influencing, engaging and provoking dialogue between photography and cinema. Professor Baker addresses “photography’s expanded field.”

University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Lecture 6:00pm
Lawrence Hall, Room 177
School of Architecture and Allied Arts, University of Oregon
1190 Franklin Boulevard | Eugene | Oregon 97403
Campus Map and Parking
This lecture is sponsored by the Davis Family Fund and the departments of Art and Art History at the University of Oregon
For more information contact Beth Roy, 541-346-3609, beth@uoregon.edu
 

This lecture may be viewed by live streaming video at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 10. Follow the link below to view the livestream.

About George Baker
George Baker is a professor of art history at UCLA, where he has taught modern and contemporary art and theory since 2003. A New York and Paris-based critic for Artforum magazine throughout the 1990s, he also works as an editor of the journal October and its publishing imprint October Books. He regularly offers courses on all aspects of modernism and the historical avant-garde, on the history of photography in the 19th- and 20th-centuries, and on specialized topics in post-war and contemporary art history. Baker received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and is a graduate of the art history program at Yale University and the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Professor Baker is the author, most recently, of The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris (MIT Press, 2007), and several other books including James Coleman: Drei Filmarbeiten (Sprengel Museum, 2002), and Gerard Byrne: Books, Magazines, and Newspapers (Lukas & Sternberg, 2003). He has published essays on a variety of postmodern and contemporary artists including Robert Smithson, Robert Whitman, Anthony McCall, Louise Lawler, Andrea Fraser, Christian Philipp Müller, Tom Burr, Rachel Harrison, Paul Chan, Martin Kippenberger, Richard Hawkins, Mike Kelley, and Knut Åsdam. In 2007 and 2008, his essay on the artist Paul Chan was published in a catalog that accompanied Chan’s major exhibition of the project The 7 Lights at the Serpentine Gallery in London and the New Museum in New York. Baker subsequently published an interview with Chan for the recent anti-war issue of October. Currently, he is working on disparate projects including a revisionist study of Picasso’s modernism and a shorter book on the work of four women artists--Zoe Leonard, Tacita Dean, Moyra Davey and Sharon Lockhart--to be entitled Lateness and Longing: On the Afterlife of Photography. The latter is part of a larger project that Baker has termed “photography’s expanded field,” detailing the fate of photography and film works in contemporary cultural production.

Future planned Lectures in the Connective Conversations series include:

Speaker To Be Announced
Fall of 2012

About The Ford Family Foundation
The Ford Family Foundation was established in 1957 by Kenneth W. and Hallie E. Ford.  Its mission is "successful citizens and vital rural communities" in Oregon and Siskiyou County, California.  The Foundation is located in Roseburg, Oregon, with a Scholarship office in Eugene.