Art History from Home:
Abstract Art in America
Abstract Art in America
Tues, Aug 17, 2021
6 pm
Robert Reed, Plum Nellie, Sea Stone, 1972. Acrylic and pencil on canvas, 71 1/8 × 71 1/4 in. (180.7 × 181 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from The Hament Corporation 73.26. Courtesy the Robert Reed Estate and Pilar Corrias Gallery
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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 highlights works in the Museum’s collection and current 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 for a fifteen-minute Q&A following the talk. 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.
Nonrepresentational art has meant different things to different artists throughout American art history. This session presents a range of artists who have used abstract language to explore human perception, emotion, embodied experience, and more. It covers the early influence of Cubism and the American Abstract Artists union in the 1930s as well as the work of Abstract Expressionists, Minimalists, and artists associated with the 1960s civil rights movement.
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.