VISUAL ARTS

Ann Hamilton, in conversation with Mary Schneider Enriquez, Houghton Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums

Ann Hamilton is a visual artist internationally recognized for the sensory surrounds of her large-scale multimedia installations. Noted for their dense accumulation of materials, her liminal environments create immersive experiences that poetically respond to the architectural presence and social history of their sites. Her talk will focus on her early 1990s installations at the Dia Art Foundation in New York and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as her most recent performance and public works, including a major new work in a public installation titled the event of a thread, at the Park Avenue Armory, New York, from December 7, 2012, through January 6, 2013.

The ArtisTalk lecture series for 2012–13 focuses on Art in Public Space—a timely subject as the Harvard Art Museums consider the reinstallation of the enhanced 32 Quincy Street building. Speakers include contemporary artists from Latin America, Europe, and the United States whose work engages viewers in public settings of varying scale and conditions—enclosed or open, vast or intimate—and in visual practices of various means—from performance to painting, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and ?lm. The lectures will include conversations with the artists, who will discuss issues of place, scale, and performative aspects of their work, among other ideas.

A reception and open galleries will follow.