VISUAL ARTS

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

Doris Salcedo’s sculptures and installations address the continuing oppression and violence plaguing not only her native Columbia but societies throughout the world. Her art often incorporates domestic furniture, giving a material presence to the unsettling absence and to the haunting pain that endures in those who survive. Salcedo will discuss how her work weaves together the poetic, the political, and the philosophical with those violent events that mark daily life for so many. Her current exhibition, Plegaria Muda (“Mute Prayer”), has travelled to ?ve museums, in Mexico City; Malmo, Sweden; Lisbon; Rome; and Sao Paulo. Salcedo continues to live and work in Bogota, Columbia.

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.

Free admission.

Limited complimentary parking at Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street.

The M. Victor Leventritt Fund was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and Greater Boston communities.

Modern and contemporary art programs are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums.