'YES Symposium' to explore optimistim in art and teaching

This Friday through Sunday, March 20-22, the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery will host ?YES: The Persistence of Optimism,? a three-day symposium that will explore the concept of optimism in art and teaching. All symposium events are free and open to the public; for more information, call the Tang at 518-580-8080.

The symposium will feature a group of artists, architects, and publishers whose work shares a common collaborative and community-based foundation. Among the speakers will be two internationally acclaimed artists, Tim Rollins and Oliver Herring, whose works are currently on view at the Tang in Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History (through Aug. 30) and Oliver Herring: Me Us Them (through June 14).

The weekend will include the following events:

7 p.m. Friday, March 20?Screening of the documentary Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins and K.O.S, followed by a dialogue between Rollins and Tang Curator Ian Berry. The film documents the relationship between Rollins, an artist, activist, and educator, and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), a group of Bronx teenagers in Rollins? after-school art program who worked together to create large-scale artworks based on books like Moby-Dick and The Scarlet Letter.

9 a.m. Saturday, March 21?A day-long symposium on optimistic strategies in art and teaching will feature Rollins and Herring along with artists Hope Ginsburg, Ben Kinmont, Allison Smith, and Paula Hayes; artist and architect Pedro Reyes; and publisher Tod Lippy.

6 p.m. Saturday, March 21?A public opening reception will celebrate the museum?s spring exhibitions. In addition to the Rollins and Herring exhibitions, the spring exhibitions will include Elevator Music 14: Lucky Dragons: Hawks and Sparrows Anti War Songs, a sound-art piece by Luke Fischbeck and his collaborators (through July 12); and A Marriage of Heaven and Hell (through April 26), which juxtaposes visionary illustrations by artist and poet William Blake with a new series of Blake-inspired works by Rollins and K.O.S. (A dialogue for A Marriage of Heaven and Hell will begin at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 19.)

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, March 22??Task,? Oliver Herring?s improvisational community art project, will take place at Universal Preservation Hall in downtown Saratoga Springs. For the event, 35 area residents will create and fulfill ?tasks? together, forming what the artist has described as a ?utopian micro-society.?

For more information on the YES Symposium events and Tang Museum exhibitions, call the museum at 518-580-8080 or visit the Tang website.