Christian Sampson, Vita in Motu (2019)
Photo: Coke Wisdom O’Neal
Program Guide
Schedule At A Glance
Thursday 27 February 6 pm
Tuesday 3 March 6 pm
Tuesday 17 March 6 pm
Thursday 19 March 6 pm
Saturday 21 March 4 pm
IN CONVERSATION Harmony Hammond and Jessica Bell Brown
Saturday 28 March 5 pm
Tuesday 31 March 6 pm
Thursday 2 April 6 pm
Tuesday 7 April 6 pm
Tuesday 14 April 10am
SCHOOL OF THOUGHT Franklin Sirmans
Thursday 16 April 6 pm
FILM SCREENING The Last Green Thread
Saturday 18 April 4 pm
Thursday 30 April 6 pm
Thursday 7 May 6 pm
FEBRUARY
Photo: Knight Foundation
ARTIST TALK
Dan Cameron on Tony Feher
Thursday 27 February 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
Dan Cameron is a New York-based curator, art writer, arts administrator, archivist and educator. Cameron was Senior Curator at the New Museum from 1995 to 2006, and he is the founder of Prospect New Orleans. He was Chief Curator at Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California from 2012 to 2015 and has headed major international projects since then. As part of Color. Theory. & (b/w), Cameron guest curated three works by artist Tony Feher. Following heightened political activism on AIDS-related issues and his own health struggles, Feher’s artistic practice evolved into discovering devalued objects whose “colors and forms conveyed the clarity and simplicity in their found state that matched the ideal in Feher’s own mind.” Join us to hear about Cameron’s curatorial process on selecting these three works and the significant impact color had on Feher’s work.
MARCH
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED: ART SINCE THE 60s
Painting is Dead. Long Live Painting. Painting in the 80s
Tuesday 3 March 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
We humans have been at this painting thing for a long time. It keeps dying, and it keeps coming back. Why?
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED: ART SINCE THE 60s
The 90s Part I Photography & Identity
Tuesday 17 March 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
Our preferred medium of verisimilitude can’t help but form a relationship to our sense of self. See how these twinned practices intersected in the 90s.
Photo: J Caldwell
ARTIST TALK
Odili Donald Odita
Thursday 19 March 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
Odita’s work explores color both in the figurative historical context and sociopolitical sense, integrating hues from past personal experiences. Odita writes, “Color in itself has the possibility of mirroring the complexity of the world as much as it has the potential for being distinct. I explore in the paintings a metaphoric ability to address the human condition through pattern, structure and design, as well as for its possibility to trigger memory.” Come hear Odita speak about his process, as he shares insight into the creation of our site-specific installation Force Field, on view in the Jan Schmidt Loggia.
Photo: City of Sarasota
THE MEMORY PROJECT
Let's Talk: Dr. Thomas W. Clyburn & Michele Parchment
Saturday 21 March 4 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racially segregated public schools as unconstitutional. Yet it took nine years for Sarasota High School to be integrated. Dr. Thomas Clyburn was one of two students to integrate the all-white institution. Dr. Clyburn will share his story about his experience during this period, and then he and the Museum’s Director of Public Engagement, Michele Parchment, will sit down in conversation to further unpack this complex period in our nation’s history and how it played out here in the Elliott building.
Photo: Clayton Porter. Courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates.
(Right) Jessica Bell Brown, 2019.
Photo: Texas Isaiah. Courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art.
ARTIST TALK
In Conversation: Harmony Hammond and Jessica Bell Brown
Saturday 28 March 5 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
Harmony Hammond is a pivotal figure in the feminist art movement of the early 1970s. Combining gender politics with Post-Minimalist concerns of materials and process, her work explores social abstraction using an array of compellingly diverse materials. Her practice occupies liminal space, challenging conventional “art versus craft” and “painting versus sculpture” distinctions. Jessica Bell Brown was recently appointed Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Previously, she served as consulting curator for the Gracie Mansion Conservancy and was a Research Fellow at The Museum of Modern Art, where she co-founded #ArtSpeaks, a quarterly series of museum-wide gallery talks.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED: ART SINCE THE 60s
The 90s Part II Relational Aesthetics & Immersive Installation
Tuesday 31 March 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
VR before VR. The Real Real. Life as art. Art as life. The presentation of self in everyday life. What is theatre, what is performance, what is living, what is a set, what is a sculpture?
APRIL
ARTIST TALK
Jean Shin
Thursday 2 April 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
Shin is known for her monumental installations that transform everyday objects into elegant expressions of identity and community. For each project, she amasses vast collections of a particular object which then become the materials for her conceptually rich sculptures, videos, and site-specific installations. Shin currently has three works on view at the Museum, each relating in different ways to the tradition of celadon ceramics in Korea. From the connoisseurship required of this high specialized, color-specific craft, to metaphors of Korean diaspora, to historic and contemporary views on gender roles, come hear her speak about the multifaceted meaning behind each celadon work.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED: ART SINCE THE 60s
Conclusion & Discussion
Tuesday 7 April 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
This session will recap the previous 14 talks. If you missed them, this will be a fun “speed art history” session!
Photo: John Taggart
MASTER CLASS - THE ART MARKET: What’s Up with that Banana, Anyway?
Tuesday 14 April 10 am – 12 pm
Members $75
Not-yet Members $100
Master class includes light refreshments and materials.
Photo: Angel Valentin
School of thought
Franklin Sirmans
Thursday 16 April 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
Join us for a conversation with Franklin Sirmans, Executive Director of the Pérez Art Museum, and Sarasota Art Museum’s Executive Director, Anne-Marie Russell, about the state of contemporary art museums and the challenges we face today in terms of shifting societal expectations. Relative to the art museum, how can we maintain scrutiny, accountability, and decolonization efforts in the face of a rapidly shifting world on the global and local scale?
Franklin Sirmans has been the director of the Pérez Art Museum, Miami since 2015. Previously serving as the curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Sirmans has an extensive background in the fields of art criticism, curating, and writing.
FILM SCREENING
The Last Green Thread
Saturday 18 April 4pm
18 min.
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
On a narrow path through Florida’s Everglades Headwaters, three friends embark on a journey to survey a fragile wilderness corridor before it disappears forever. Amidst a backdrop of massive development and population growth, their expedition documents the vitality and connectedness of an ecosystem in a state of rapid transformation. Mother nature may be resilient, but when the last green thread is stretched to the breaking point, can we summon the courage and resourcefulness to change course? Join us for a screening of The Last Green Thread followed by a discussion with conservationist and subject of the film, Mallory Dimmitt of Florida Wildlife Corridor.
Photo: Montalvo Arts Center
ARTIST TALK
Leah Rosenberg
Thursday 30 April 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
Based in San Francisco, Rosenberg’s art spans painting, installation, sculpture, printmaking, and food, while focusing on the role of color in our lives and its emotional and psychological impact. She has done a number of site-specific installations in which she mines the local landscape for inspirational colors, then incorporates them into lively designs that respond to the architecture of the site. Come hear her speak about 28 Colors (Sarasota, FL), currently installed in our Museum lobby and stairwell, and find out which Sarasota colors captured her curiosity!
MAY
Photo: Strang Architects
ARTIST TALK
Architecture in the Anthropocene
Max Strang
Thursday 7 May 6 pm
Members $10
Not-yet Members $20
Architect Max Strang will discuss his visionary “paper project,” Orlampa, a dystopian blueprint for coastal Floridians to respond with when the seas rise and push us inland.
This talk is part of the Museum’s Architecture in the Anthropocene initiative. The Architecture in the Anthropocene series asks a simple question: In a world of shifting climate trends, environmental stress that drives humans to migrate and relocate, and radical new technologies that are blurring the boundaries of organic and machine, how should we be building? Or, perhaps, should we be building? What futures should we prepare for? What materials should we be constructing with? This series will investigate how we are prepared, or not, for our era.