Art History from Home: / Making Knowing Thurs, Apr 8, 2021, 12 pm

Art History from Home:
Making Knowing

Thurs, Apr 8, 2021
12 pm

Brightly-colored reclaimed wool blankets stacked in an upward pile and punctured in the center by a vertical steel I-beam
Brightly-colored reclaimed wool blankets stacked in an upward pile and punctured in the center by a vertical steel I-beam

Marie Watt, Skywalker/Skyscraper (Axis Mundi), 2012. Reclaimed wool blankets and steel, overall: 96 × 20 × 22 in. (243.8 × 50.8 × 55.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 2020.42a-b. © Marie Watt

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This event will have automated closed captions through Zoom. Live captioning is available for public programs and events upon request with seven business days advance notice. We will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made outside of that window of time. To place a request, please contact us at accessfeedback@whitney.org or (646) 666-5574 (voice). Relay and voice calls welcome.

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Online, via Zoom

This series of online talks by the Whitney’s Joan Tisch Teaching Fellows highlights works in the Museum's collection and recent exhibitions to illuminate critical topics in American art from 1900 to the present. During each thirty-minute session, participants are invited to comment and ask questions through a moderated chat. Sessions are available live only, Tuesdays at 6 pm and Thursdays at 12 pm, but topics and speakers do periodically repeat. Check back here for more sessions added regularly.

Explore how artists have used the materials, methods, and strategies of craft to challenge the power structures that determine artistic value and reclaim visual languages that have typically been coded as feminine, domestic, or vernacular. Some expand techniques with long histories, such as weaving, sewing, or pottery, while others experiment with textiles, thread, clay, beads, and glass, among other mediums. Featured artists include Ruth Asawa, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Simone Leigh, and Pepón Osorio.

Grant Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of art history at the University of Southern California and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney. His dissertation, "Sheila Hicks: Weaving to the World," traces the first critical history of the prolific American artist, weaver, and pioneer of global contemporary art. An active curator, critic, and writer, he has published work in Artforum, Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, Garage, and Performa magazine, where he was a writer-in-residence from 2012 to 2014.