Making Sense of Contemporary Art: How Did Art Get Mixed Up in Politics?

Learning Opportunity: Making Sense of Contemporary Art
with Dr. Dominic A. Willsdon, Executive Director, ICA at VCU

Join us for a series of classes at the ICA at VCU where we will explore together how to see and understand contemporary art.

Contemporary art can be difficult to see. An all white canvas or an everyday object on a pedestal may seem mysterious. How do we look at it? What can we think about it? In fact, our looking and thinking is a part of the art. And when we learn to look, ask questions, and make connections, contemporary art comes alive. In this way, contemporary art can be the most understandable era in the history of art, because it has to do with you and I seeing the work — right here, right now — and connecting it to the world we share. In this series of classes, we will learn how to see and understand contemporary art.

 
Making sense of contemporary art is not so much about looking at art, but looking at the world through art. In this course, we’ll learn to see our world differently. And maybe uncover a new part of ourselves along the way.

Please join us for one, two or all three. Each class is designed to make sense by itself.

February 28, 2023, 6:00 to 7:30 pm – Can art be anything?

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A work of art used to be a specific kind of thing: a painting, a drawing, a sculpture. But for a long time now, since the 1960s or earlier, anything at all can be seen as a work of art: found objects, gestures, fragments of language, ideas, events, and literally anything else. How and why did this happen? How can we say which artworks are good anymore? The whole world of contemporary art revolves around these questions.

March 28, 2023, 6:00 to 7:30 pm – How did art get mixed up in politics?

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For centuries, art has taken sides in the political struggles of its day. Art history has been the story of artists who sought to be the vanguard not just of artistic change, but of social and political change too. That is what we mean when we talk about art being avant-garde. How and why is politics so present in the art of our time? What stories and perspectives get left out?

April 25, 2023, 6:00 to 7:30 pm – Where in the world?

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Contemporary art – like contemporary life – has become global like never before, for better and for worse. In many ways, we understand contemporary art in terms of geography more than of history, as we previously did. How do the worldwide horizons of art now affect how it is made and how we see it? And what becomes of the local? What were the major art events worldwide in 2022, and what do they mean for us?

Registration Fee: $10 per participant, per class or $25 for all three classes. Educators, students and artists may participate at no charge.

Dominic Willsdon is Associate Professor of Art Education and Executive Director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. His research concerns aesthetic education and public culture. He was formerly Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Practice at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a Pedagogical Curator of the 9th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre (2013), a Co-Curator of the 9th Liverpool Biennial (2016), and Curator of Public Programs at Tate Modern (2000-2005). Recent curatorial projects include Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa (2014), Public Knowledge (2016-19), Suzanne Lacy: We Are Here (2019), Fernanda Laguna: As Everyone (2020). Recent publications include Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good (MIT, 2016). He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Visual Culture. Willsdon received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Essex and his DEA (Diplôme d’études approfondies) in philosophy from the Université de Paris-XII.