WINTER/SPRING 1999 SEMINAR SERIES SCHEDULE

Released: November 30, 1998

James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director, and Art Museums' curators, conservators, and curatorial interns, are pleased to present this continuing calendar of public seminars. Aside from the participation of a number of Art Museums' staff members who will draw upon original works in the collections, contemporary photographers will participate in our popular Light Conversation series. Fees and advance registration requirements vary, please see each program for details.

SEMINARS

Close-Up: Study Room Collections in the Busch-Reisinger Museum
Saturdays, March 20, 27, April 10
Busch-Reisinger Museum Study Room, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Free admission; advance registration is not required, but space will be limited.
Sarah Miller, 1998-1999 Werner and Maren Otto Curatorial Intern
The Busch-Reisinger Museum's collections are rich in prints, drawings, photographs, textiles, artists' books, and other fragile works that cannot often be displayed in the galleries. However, the public Study Room in the Busch-Reisinger Museum provides visitors with easy access to these treasures and an intimate setting for study, sketching, or contemplation. As part of a new initiative to introduce visitors to the resources of the Study Room, this series of informal talks will provide opportunities to view extraordinary and rarely-seen works from the permanent collections.

Light Conversation: Seminars with Contemporary Photographers
Mondays, February 22, March 22, April 19
Mongan Center, Fogg Art Museum, 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Free admission; advance registration is not required
These intimate seminars offer the opportunity for a limited audience to interact with contemporary artists, discussing aspects of their work from original objects in the Mongan Center. Deanne Sokolin creates ironic images using digital technology that investigates issues of Jewish identity and the ritual of commemoration. James Casebere investigates the ambiguous spaces of solitude found in prisons, monasteries, asylums, and even homes in the compelling photographs he makes from architectural tableaux he constructs in his studio. A member of the photography faculty at the Carpenter Center, Sage Sohier's recent work includes a challenging documentary series on individuals coping with serious medical interventions.

Extreme Connoisseurship: Considering Contemporary Art at Harvard
Mondays, February 22, March 1, 8
Fogg Art Museum, 6:00-7:30 p.m.
$100; $75 for Friends; advance registration is required, please call (617) 495-4544 to register.
Linda Norden, Barbara Lee Associate Curator of Contemporary Art

The recognition that the art and ideologies associated with modernism are no longer coincident with being modern is hardly a new one, but as the distance from the historic period in which modernist aesthetics first emerged increases, especially for institutions identified with these aesthetics such as the Museums of Modern Art, this recognition has become painful. At Harvard, the recent decision to create curatorial positions in both modern art and contemporary art would seem to acknowledge the distinction between the two as a challenge. In a sense, by taking on contemporary art, the Harvard University Art Museums have taken on the larger question of the status its museums accord to discrete art objects, for, like MoMA, Harvard's museums are distinguished above all by their collections and by the perception that aesthetic criteria tend to dominate in curatorial decision-making.

This series of three seminars will examine how the renowned collections of Harvard's Art Museums-and the status accorded to individual art objects as a result of the museums' emphasis on collecting-might influence its efforts to take on the curating of contemporary art, and in what ways this influence might be creatively exploited. Seminars will take place in the galleries and in the classroom. We will analyze some of the broad shifts in the role ascribed to the autonomous art object in postwar art; but we will also examine some of the more specific curatorial expectations for individual contemporary art objects that have guided acquisition and exhibition decisions within the Fogg and the Busch-Reisinger Museums.

Building a Collection: Contemporary Photographs at the Fogg
Thursdays, March 11, 18, 25
Mongan Center; Fogg Art Museum, 6:00-7:30 p.m.
$100; $75 for Friends; advance registration is required, please call (617) 495-4544 to register.
Deborah Martin Kao, Charles C. Cunningham, Sr., Associate Curator of Photographs

In conjunction with the exhibition Building Representation: Photography and Architecture, Contemporary Interactions, this three-part series will explore the surprisingly long history and current focus on contemporary photography at the Fogg Art Museum. Although a major strength of our collection, institutional support for contemporary photography in both the academay and the museum proceeded slowly and unevenly at best. Few universities established academic programs in studio photography or photographic history until the late 1960s and 1970s, when serious attention to the medium coincided with the rise of cultural theories in which the seeming veracity of photographs was recast as false documents, constructed realities and subversive texts. The origin of the Fogg's photograph collection corresponds to this shift in the status of photography within the larger culture. Using works of art from the collection, we will examine the over thirty-year history of the Fogg's remarkable collection of contemporary photographs, considering its larger contexts and meanings.

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The Harvard University Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible. For general information, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea Ewen at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please contact the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

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The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and to all on Saturday mornings and all day on Wednesdays. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June; Wednesdays only in July and August. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m. The Harvard University Art Museums is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.