Watch and Listen

In this video, artist Gary Simmons discusses his work Step in the Arena (The Essentialist Trap), 1994, on view in the exhibition Singular Visions.

Artist Gary Simmons joins cultural historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., for a conversation on narrating history, imagined communities, and the power of art to shape identity.

Since the late 1960s Seminars with Artists has provided a forum for intimate conversations with some of the most notable American artists of the day. This spring, the series takes its cue from works on view in the Museum and engages questions of site specificity, space, and place, broadly defined.

In this video, Gary Simmons discusses Ghoster (1997), an erasure drawing based upon his childhood memories of roller coasters such as the Coney Island Cyclone. Simmons explains how Ghoster negotiates issues of race and access, and speaks to the significance of these types of shared sites and experiences.