Dunkerley Dialogue to explore "Energy Field"
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery's next Dunkerley Dialogue will be a conversation in and about Liz Collins's Energy Field at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 10.
The event will take place in the Energy Field installation on the Tang's mezzanine, and will include artist and designer Collins, Tang's Dayton Director Ian Berry, and the scholar and critic Julia Bryan-Wilson, an associate professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of California, Berkeley.
Energy Field, which opened in October, is the first in a new Tang series that asks artists to imagine what a museum community space can be. With exploding supernovas on the ceiling, chevrons on the wall, and stripes on the floor, the brash design is offset by plush carpeting, raining yarn, and upholstered furniture. The installation is sure to spark a lively dialogue about design, materials, and the ideas behind the creation of a community space in a museum.
Julia Bryan-Wilson has written widely on questions of artistic labor, feminist and queer theory, performance, textile histories, photography, video, visual culture of the nuclear age, and collaborative practices. Her essays have appeared in such publications as Artforum, Art Journal, Grey Room, October, and Journal of Modern Craft. She is the author of Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, published by the University of California Press in 2009, and editor of OCTOBER Files: Robert Morris, published by the MIT Press. Her book on textiles since the 1970s is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.
Liz Collins is an artist and designer. She presented her performance piece, Knitting Nation, at the Tang as part of the exhibition Dance/Draw (2012), and it has also been shown at 11 other locations, including the Rhode Island School of Design, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and the Museum of Modern Art: Studio. Her recent work explores the boundaries between painting, fiber arts, and installations, creating spaces that envelop the viewer in vibrating color fields.
Ian Berry is Dayton Director of the Tang Teaching Museum. Berry has organized over ninety museum exhibitions including interdisciplinary collaborations on subjects from the Hudson River to Shaker furniture, and monographic exhibitions with artists such as Terry Adkins, Nicole Eisenman, Nancy Grossman, Jim Hodges, Nina Katchadourian, Corita Kent, Nicholas Krushenick, Shahzia Sikander, Amy Sillman, Fred Tomaselli, and Kara Walker.
The Tang's Dunkerley Dialogues bring exhibiting artists, Skidmore faculty, and scholars from a wide variety of fields together in conversation. The format is often a catalyst for new connections and understandings across disciplines, and can spark new ideas for all participants. Dunkerley Dialogues are named to honor the generous support of Michele Dunkerley, Skidmore College ’80.
