Removing Public Art. A Symposium Hosted By Madison Square Park Conservancy And School Of Visual Arts

About

Artist Alison Saar and Nelson-Atkins Museum Director Julián Zugazagoitia featured in the keynote conversation

New York Times Art Critic and Even Founding Editor Jason Farago to moderate panel of prominent cultural leaders

Madison Square Park Conservancy and School of Visual Arts announce Removing Public Art, a symposium where artists, cultural leaders, and scholars will lead a conversation on historic and contemporary monuments, and current solutions. The program will take place on Friday, June 1, 2018 from 9:00AM to 12 noon at SVA Theatre (333 West 23rd Street, New York City).

Featuring:

Welcome:

Mitchell J. Silver, FAICP, Commissioner, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation

Panel:

Moderator: Jason Farago, Art Critic, The New York Times and Founding Editor, Even

Gonzalo Casals, Executive Director, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, and Member, Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, New York

Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Deputy Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.

Melvin Edwards, Artist, New Jersey

Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions Management, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Dr. Martha Sandweiss, Professor of History and Director, The Princeton & Slavery Project, Princeton University

Keynote Conversation:

Alison Saar, Artist, Los Angeles

Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell Director & CEO, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

Artist Presentations:

Diana Al-Hadid, Artist, Brooklyn

Bryan C. Lee Jr., Founder of Paper Monuments, New Orleans

Arlene Shechet, Artist, New York and Hudson Valley

The role of public art has been at the center of the controversy over Confederate and other historic monuments and contemporary art. Cities, museums, civic organizations, and government entities are taking active positions in removing, reconsidering, or recontextualizing statuary. Austin, Baltimore, Charlottesville, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Washington, D.C., and other municipalities are reckoning with the legacy of post-Civil War and twentieth-century works of questionable statesmen, glorified generals, and spurious heroes. Institutions are wrestling with issues of representation centering on the interpretation of the past in the form of historic and contemporary public sculpture.

On Friday, June 1, 2018 from 9:00AM to 12:00PM, Madison Square Park Conservancy and School of Visual Arts will host Removing Public Art, a symposium free and open to the public. Brooke Kamin Rapaport, Deputy Director and Martin Friedman Senior Curator, Mad. Sq. Art, will deliver opening remarks. New York Times Art Critic Jason Farago will moderate a panel discussion with museum directors, an artist, a curator, and a scholar: Gonzalo Casals, Executive Director, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, and Member, Mayor Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, New York; Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Deputy Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.; Melvin Edwards, artist, New Jersey; Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions Management, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Dr. Martha Sandweiss, Professor of History and Director, The Princeton & Slavery Project, Princeton University. The keynote conversation will feature artist Alison Saar and Nelson-Atkins Museum Director Julián Zugazagoitia. The event will conclude with presentations by artist Diana Al-Hadid, architect Bryan C. Lee Jr., and artist Arlene Shechet. There will be opportunities for the audience to ask questions of the participants in Q&A segments during the symposium.

Removing Public Art

Friday, June 1, 2018

9:00AM to 12:00PM

SVA Theatre

School of Visual Arts
333 West 23rd Street

New York, NY 10011

Free and open to the public, but a reply is necessary.

Please RSVP to symposium@madisonsquarepark.org.