Making Sense of Contemporary Art: Words and Pictures

Making Sense of Contemporary Art, led by ICA Director Dominic A. Willsdon, is our ongoing series of introductions to the art of our times. In the second season, we look at how the work of many artists has evolved, not from painting and sculpture primarily, but from filmmaking, performance, and publishing. Contemporary art institutions are a home for artistic experiments that have been exiled from the movie theater, the television, the concert hall, the nightclub, the magazine and the book. These classes offer a new, broader set of perspectives on contemporary art. We will make the familiar seem strange, and the strange, familiar.

Words and Pictures – November 29, 2023

Schedule:

5:00 pm – Doors Open for Gallery Viewing, Archival Book Viewing, and Hospitality in the Abby Moore Cafe
5:15 pm – Exhibition Tour
6:30 pm – Class Begins
7:30 pm – Class Ends

Presenters:
Dominic Willsdon, PhD
Director
Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University

Katharine Buckley, MLIS, MFA
Teaching and Learning Librarian, Special Collections & Archives
Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries

Many contemporary artworks are texts, or texts with images, or images of texts, or texts about images. Some of these artworks exist in multiple copies and circulate in the form of postcards, posters, zines, books, pamphlets, emails, and newspapers. Through a joint presentation with Dominic and Katharine, this class looks at how the forms and strategies of publishing have been adopted by contemporary artists.

This lecture series is made possible in part by kind support from the Robert Lehman Foundation.