Carmen Herrera and The 100 Years Show

Floor Three, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

This program, held in connection with Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight, begins with a screening of The 100 Years Show (30 mins, 2015), a documentary directed by Alison Klayman that combines verité footage from the years leading up to Carmen Herrera's 100th birthday with interviews and archival images of Herrera's life and work. The screening is followed by a panel conversation about Herrera’s practice and reception, and abstraction in contemporary art practice. The panel is moderated by scholar Edward J. Sullivan, who contributed to the catalogue for Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight, and includes Alison Klayman, artist Sarah Crowner, and scholar Abigail McEwen.

About the speakers:
Sarah Crowner’s (B. 1974, Philadelphia) sewn paintings, tile floors, murals and sculptural installations draw on twentieth-century abstraction and modernist design, revealing the physical history between a composition and its making. The artist’s first major solo exhibition at a US museum, titled "Beetle in the Leaves," is on view at MASS MoCA, North Adams through January 31, 2017.

Alison Klayman's films include Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Special Jury Prize, Sundance 2012), which was on the Academy Award shortlist for Best Documentary and was nominated for two Emmys and a Director's Guild of America Award. The 100 Years Show is a four-time festival winner for Best Short Documentary.

Abigail McEwen is Associate Professor of Latin American Art at the University of Maryland. Her areas of research and teaching interest span the modern Americas, with an emphasis on the art of twentieth-century Cuba and Puerto Rico, the transnational history of abstraction, and the postwar avant-garde. In 2016, she will be publishing a book titled Revolutionary Horizons: Art and Polemics in 1950s Cuba with Yale University Press.

Edward J. Sullivan is Helen Gould Sheppard Professor in the History of Art at New York University. His research focuses on the arts and visual cultures of the Americas with a particular concentration in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. His numerous publications include From San Juan to Paris and Back: Francisco Oller and Caribbean Art in the Era of Impressionism (Yale University Press, 2014) and Fragile Demon: Juan Soriano in Mexico 1935–1950 (Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2008). From 2003 to 2009, he also served as FAS Dean for the Humanities at NYU.

Tickets are required ($10 adults; $8 members, students and seniors).