April 2015 Programs at the Jewish Museum Feature Laurie Simmons in Conversation, an Evening with Video Artist Keren Cytter, and More

New York, NY - The Jewish Museum's 2015 slate of lectures, discussions, and events continues in April with a conversation between acclaimed artist Laurie Simmons and author Lynne Tillman. Other highlights include an evening focusing on the work of video artist Keren Cytter; an author talk with Peter Grose; and a discussion of issues in contemporary photography featuring Barbara Kasten and Chris Wiley.

Further program and ticket information is available by calling 212.423.3200 or online at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar. The Jewish Museum is located at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan.

 

PROGRAM SCHEDULE - APRIL 2015

 

Dialogue and Discourse: Laurie Simmons and Lynne Tillman

Monday, April 13, 6:30pm

The Mildred and George Weissman Program

Artist Laurie Simmons, whose exhibition How We See is on view at the Jewish Museum through August 9, sits down with writer and critic Lynne Tillman to discuss her work and career.

Laurie Simmons (born Far Rockaway, New York, 1949) is a photographer and filmmaker. She received her bachelor's degree in fine arts from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1971. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the Neues Museum, Nuremberg (2014); the Print Gallery at the New York Public Library (2010); the Baltimore Museum of Art (1997); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1987); and P.S. 1, New York (1979). Her work has also been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among other venues. She lives and works in New York.

Lynne Tillman collaborates often with artists and writes regularly on culture, and her fiction is anthologized widely. Her last collection of short stories, This Is Not It, included 23 stories based on the work of 22 contemporary artists. Her novels include American Genius, A Comedy (2006); No Lease on Life (1998), which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Cast in Doubt (1992); Motion Sickness (1991); and Haunted Houses (1987). What Would Lynne Tillman Do? was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. She is the Fiction Editor at Fence Magazine, Professor and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany, and a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The Jewish Museum is presenting a series of recent, large-scale photographs by artist Laurie Simmons, on view through August 9, 2015. The six new works in Laurie Simmons: How We See draw upon the "Doll Girls" community, people who alter themselves to look like Barbie, baby dolls, and Japanese anime characters through make-up, dress, and even cosmetic surgery. Evoking the tradition of the high-school portrait - when teenagers present their idealized selves to the camera - Simmons photographed fashion models seated in front of a curtain, cropped from the shoulders down. Despite the banal pose, each portrait is activated by kaleidoscopic lighting and small, surprising details that produce a nearly psychedelic effect. The models have preternaturally large, sparkling eyes that are painted on their closed lids, a well-known Doll Girls technique, and stare out at the visitor with an uncanny, alien gaze.How We See draws an arc between portraits traded among classmates and the persona-play that "Doll Girls" rapidly execute on smartphones, where continuous feeds of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter allow alternate versions of the self to appear, morph, and disappear. Simmons has a longstanding interest in masking and disguises, and in these works probes the ever-widening gap between real life and the eerie artificiality enabled by social media.

Free with RSVP

 

Author Talk

Peter Grose: A Good Place to Hide

Thursday, April 16, 11:30am

Writer Peter Grose discusses his recent book A Good Place To Hide, based on the true story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a French village in the Loire Valley that conspired to save the lives of 3,500 Jews under the noses of the Germans and the soldiers of Vichy France. The Times Literary Supplement called this book "a reminder of the best that humans are capable of, but also an inspiration."

Peter Grose is the author of two books on Australian military history: A Very Rude Awakening, about a midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour in May 1942; and An Awkward Truth, about the bombing of the city of Darwin in February of the same year. A film based on An Awkward Truth - The Bombing of Darwin - won the Screen Producers Association of Australia Award for Best Documentary.

Tickets: $15 adults; $12 students and seniors; $10 Jewish Museum members

 

New York Jewish Film Festival Presents:

Artist Focus: Keren Cytter

Monday, April 20, 6:30pm

Israeli artist Keren Cytter uses visual media in strikingly original ways to build powerful and affecting narratives out of skewed scenes of everyday life. Her films, video installations, and drawings represent social realities through experimental modes of storytelling characterized by a nonlinear, cyclical logic and multiple layers of images: conversation, monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impressions, memories, and imaginings are poetic and self-referential in composition, thought provoking, and inescapably engrossing. This program will include five works by Cytter and a discussion moderated by Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum, and Curator for Special Programs, New York Jewish Film Festival.

Keren Cytter was born in 1977 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Solo exhibitions of her work include: Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne (2014); Zach Feuer, New York (2014); Tate Modern Oil Tanks, London (2012); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2011); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010); and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010). Recent group exhibitions include Jew York, Zach Feuer, New York (2013); The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009); and Television Delivers People, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008). In 2006 she was awarded the prestigious Bâloise Art Prize at Art Basel for The Victim. Cytter's first large scale survey in the United States will be on view at MCA Chicago from March 28 to October 4, 2015.

Free with RSVP

 

Panel Discussion

Converging Lenses: Issues in Contemporary Photography

Thursday, April 23, 6:30pm

Over the last ten years, approaches to using photography have changed drastically in reaction to new digital imaging technologies and the proliferation of images on the Internet. This panel discussion will focus on interventions in the medium by younger artists Lucas Blalock and Talia Chetrit, and how this trend has placed renewed focus on the work of Barbara Kasten, who laid the foundations for photography's current moment. Moderated by Chris Wiley, artist, Adjunct Professor at New York University, and contributing editor at Frieze.

Lucas Blalock (b. 1978, Asheville, NC) lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. He has received solo exhibitions at Ramkien Crucible, New York (2013) and Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2014), with a show at Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, from April 2 to May 15, 2015. Recent group exhibitions include New Pictures of Common Objects at MoMA PS1, New York (2013); Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (2012-13); and Towards a Warm Math, curated by Chris Wiley, On Stellar Rays, New York (2012).

Talia Chetrit (b. 1982, Washington, DC) lives and works in New York. She received solo exhibitions at Leslie Fritz, New York (2013); Frieze New York (2012); Michael Benevento, Los Angeles, CA (2011); and Renwick Gallery, New York (2011). Her work was included in group exhibitions at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris (2013); sculptureCenter, Long Island City, NY (2012); deCordova Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA (2012); Marlborough Chelsea, New York, NY (2011); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (2009)

Barbara Kasten (b. 1936, Chicago) lives and works in Chicago. Her work has been the subject of several one-person exhibitions nationally and internationally. A survey exhibition of her work from the 1970s to the present is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia through August 16, 2015. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions, most recently A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio, Museum of Modern Art, New York; and The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography (book/traveling exhibition). Kasten's work is in numerous museum collections throughout the world including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; SF MoMA, San Francisco; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; and The TATE Modern, London. She has been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Fulbright Hays Fellowship, among other grants.

Chris Wiley's writing has appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues, and magazines such as Kaleidoscope, Mousse, and Frieze, where he is a contributing editor. He has previously worked in a curatorial capacity on a variety of exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and was an assistant curator on the 8th Gwangju Biennial in 2010, as well as a curatorial advisor and chief catalog writer for the 55th Venice Biennale. His work has recently appeared in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Hauser and Wirth, Marianne Boesky, and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. He is the curator of the upcoming exhibition, Part Picture, at MoCCA Toronto.

Free with Pay-What-You-Wish Admission - RSVP Recommended

 

A Closer Look Gallery Talks

Mondays, April 6, 13, 20, and 27, 1:00pm

Educators and curators engage visitors in discussions about select works of art in Masterpieces & Curiosities: Nicole Eisenman's Seder on April 6 and 20; and in Repetition and Difference on April 13 and 27.

Free with Museum Admission

 

Support

Public programs are made possible by endowment support from the William Petschek Family, the Trustees of the Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Foundation, William Halo, Benjamin Zucker, the Marshall M. Weinberg Fund, with additional support from Marshall M. Weinberg, the Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Foundation, the Saul and Harriet M. Rothkopf Family Foundation and Ellen Liman. Wish You Were Here has been funded by a generous donation from Lorraine Beitler, Ed.D and Martin Beitler, Esq. Public support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.