Courses
Whitney courses are multi-week programs that examine key issues in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American art and culture.
FALL 2011
Artists’ Communities
Six Thursdays
October 13, 20, 27; November 3, 10 and 17
Morning Session: 9:30–11:00 am
OR
Afternoon Session: 1:30-3:00 pm
Enrollment: $450
Members: $375
This six-week course focuses on “Artists’ Communities” and explores the informal networks, communities, and movements that develop among artists working with similar concerns and a shared sensibility. It begins by looking back to historical groups such as the Stieglitz circle, and then examines the Earth Art movement, the Pictures Generation, and more contemporary communities.This course includes two guided tours of downtown galleries.
Instructor: Suzanne Hudson. Hudson is Assistant Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Southern California. She is co-founder of the Contemporary Art Think Tank and president of the College Art Association-affiliated Society of Contemporary Art Historians. A regular contributor to Artforum, she is the author of Robert Ryman: Used Paint (MIT Press, 2009).
To register for the course, please call 212-671-8359.
For general inquiries and information relating to the course, please email courses@whitney.org.
Sherrie Levine, “La Fortune” (After Man Ray: 4), 1990. Felt and mahogany, 33 × 110 × 60 in. (83.8 × 279.4 × 152.4 cm) overall. Edition of 6. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Eugene Schwartz, and Robert Sosnick 92.1a-h
© 1990 Sherrie Levine
FALL 2010
Inside Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time
Four Wednesdays
November 3, 10, 17, and December 1
10–11:30 am
Enrollment: $350
Members: $275
This 4-week course offers an in-depth exploration of Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time. By focusing on select works within the exhibition each week, detailed attention will be given to the stylistic and thematic choices of the artists, as well as the historical context in which the works were produced. We will explore the development of different modes of realism in American art in the early twentieth century, and the rise of the city and urban life as a subject for this group of painters. This class includes exclusive access to the galleries when the Museum is closed to the public.
Instructor: Michael Lobel. Lobel is Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the M.A. Program in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism, and Theory at Purchase College, State University of New York. He is the author of Image Duplicator: Roy Lichtenstein and the Emergence of Pop Art (Yale University Press, 2002) and James Rosenquist: Pop Art, Politics and History in the 1960s (University of California Press, 2009). He is currently writing a book on John Sloan, the Ashcan School, and popular illustration.
To register for the course, please call 212-671-8359.
For general inquiries and information relating to the course, please email courses@whitney.org.
FALL 2010
Beyond the Artist’s Hand: Contemporary Art Methods and Practices
Six Thursdays
October 7, 14, 21,28, November 4 and 18
10–11:30 am
Enrollment: $450
Members: $375
Sold out
This 6-week course examines the range and variety of contemporary artists’ working methods and processes, and will help to make sense of significant shifts in artistic modes of production. We will explore the trend of moving away from conventional materials and traditional definitions of mediums to a more expansive understanding of what constitutes an object. We will look at key artists working today and ask how their work relates to the art of the past. This course includes a studio visit with a guest artist and a tour of Chelsea galleries.
Instructor: Suzanne Hudson. Hudson is Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is co-founder of the Contemporary Art Think Tank and president of the College Art Association-affiliated Society of Contemporary Art Historians. A regular contributor to Artforum, she is the author of Robert Ryman: Used Paint (MIT Press, 2009).
Paul Thek, Untitled (Four Tube Meat Piece), 1964, from the series Technological Reliquaries. Wax, metal, wood, paint, plaster, rubber, resin, and glass. 16 1/8 × 16 1/4 × 5 3/8 in. (41 × 41.3 × 13.7 cm.). Kolodny Family Collection. © The Estate of George Paul Thek; courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York. Photograph by Orcutt & Van Der Putten
Related Exhibition
SPRING 2010
Inside 2010, the Whitney Biennial
Five Thursdays
March 11, 18, April 8, 15, and 22
10–11:30 am
Enrollment: $375
Members: $300
Sold out
This 5-week course offers an in-depth exploration of 2010, the Whitney Biennial. By focusing on one floor of 2010 each week, detailed attention will be given to the artists, mediums, and themes that emerge within the Biennial. Close examination of Collecting Biennials, a related exhibition which will showcase previous Biennial artists from the Whitney’s collection, will offer an historical framework for this 75th Biennial, while also allowing for consideration of the legacy that 2010 will impart. Select Biennial artists will also visit the course to discuss their work.
Instructor: Kate Nesin. Nesin is a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney and a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, where she specializes in Post-War and contemporary American artists and is working on a dissertation examining the constructed objects of painter Cy Twombly. Her publications include essays on Richard Serra for the Guggenheim Bilbao, the journal Parkett, and the Gagosian Gallery; as well as essays on Twombly for Tate Papers and the Gagosian Gallery. She has lectured on Twombly at the Tate Modern in London and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Fall 2009
American Abstract Art: O’Keeffe to the Present
Daytime session:
11 am–12:30 pm
or
Evening session:
7–8:30 pm
Enrollment: $450
Members: $375
This eight-week course investigates key movements and artists with particular focus on the historical origins of abstract art and on significant models of abstraction as they developed in the twentieth century and continue to develop today. We will explore topics ranging from the emergence of nonrepresentational painting to the persistence of abstraction in contemporary art. The course includes two downtown gallery tours.
Suzanne Hudson is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in residence at the Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art, Washington, DC. She is co-founder of the Contemporary Art Think Tank and president of the College Art Association-affiliated Society of Contemporary Art Historians. A regular contributor to Artforum, she is the author of Robert Ryman: Used Paint (MIT Press, 2009).
