Recent Posts

Event: Historic New England’s “The Making of ‘Haymarket'”

Event: Historic New England’s “The Making of ‘Haymarket'”

Join Historic New England at the Otis House on Monday, November 9, for an author discussion on the new book, Haymarket. Hear Historic New England Manager of Community Engagement and Exhibitions (and Tufts professor!) Ken Turino and photographer Justin Goodstein talk about their experiences and their discoveries 

Event: Raise the Roof at the Tufts Art Gallery

Event: Raise the Roof at the Tufts Art Gallery

On Wednesday, November 4 at 7 PM, the Tufts Art Gallery is hosting a screening of the documentary “Raise the Roof” by Yari and Cary Wolinski. The film will be screened in room 304 of Tisch Library and will be followed by a panel discussion 

Event at the List Center, MIT: Public Art and the Commons

Event at the List Center, MIT: Public Art and the Commons

Lawrence Weiner's temporary mural on Greenway Wall, entitled A TRANSLATION FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER. Photo and mural from the partnership between The Rose F. Kennedy Greenway Conservancy and the MIT List Visual Arts Center.
Lawrence Weiner’s temporary mural on Greenway Wall, entitled A TRANSLATION FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER. Photo and mural from the partnership between The Rose F. Kennedy Greenway Conservancy and the MIT List Visual Arts Center.

As a 30th anniversary celebration, the List Center at MIT is presenting their annual Wasserman Forum: Public Art and the Commons. Public art has emerged as a crucial issue over the past decade. In response to conditions of intensifying economic and political precarity, artists have renewed a dialogue on those social and cultural resources held in common, including media, education, language, the environment, and housing. The 2015 Wasserman Forum will examine this development with a keynote address and three panels of practitioners from the visual arts, critical theory, and political activism. Speakers will consider contemporary public art from multiple perspectives: its role in recent revolutionary contexts, including Turkey and Egypt; its intersection with digital culture; and its purpose in an era of privatization.

The Forum will take place at the List Center, Bartos Theatre, Lower Level. Free and open to the general public – however registration for this event is required.  To register click here.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2015

12-1 PM – Tour
Lawrence Weiner’s A TRANSLATION FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER (2015)
Location: Dewey Square Park, Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston

Keynote Address
Location: List Center, Bartos Theater

5 PM – Welcome
Paul C. Ha (Director, List Center)
Julie Burros (Chief of Arts and Culture, City of Boston)

5:30-7 PM – Keynote
Thomas Hirschhorn (Artist, Paris) on the Gramsci Monument (2013)
Includes a discussion with Erik Farmer (President, Forest Houses Residents Association, New York) and Yasmil Raymond (Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA). Moderated by Jordan Troeller (Wasserman Fellow, List Center).

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2015

9:30-10:30 PM – Tour
Public Art Collection at MIT
Group meets in the List Center’s atrium-level lobby

Panel Sessions
Location: List Center, Bartos Theater

11-12:30 PM – The Square
Jasmina Metwaly (Artist and Filmmaker, Cairo)
Philip Rizk (Filmmaker and Writer, Cairo)
Hakan Topal (Artist, New York and Ankara; Assistant Professor, Purchase College, SUNY)
Moderated by Henriette Huldisch (Curator, List Center)

2-3:30 PM – The Network
Jodi Dean (Professor, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY)
Daniel van der Velden (Designer and Co-founder, Metahaven, Amsterdam)
Moderated by Gediminas Urbonas (Associate Professor and Director, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology)

4-5:30 PM – The Institution
Bill Arning (Director, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston)
Lina Viste Grønli (Artist, Cambridge, MA, and Oslo)
Lawrence Weiner (Artist, New York and Amsterdam)
Moderated by Alise Upitis (Assistant Curator, Public Art and Exhibitions, List Center)

Event at Historic New England: Saving the Southwest Corridor

Event at Historic New England: Saving the Southwest Corridor

Historic New England is hosting an event at the Otis House this coming Wednesday, October 21, from 7 to 9 PM. The talk centers around the project in the 1950s through the 1970s to build a twelve-lane highway that would threaten many of Boston’s southern 

Tufts Event: Tisch Talks in the Humanities: The Value of Culturally Enriching Field Trips

Tufts Event: Tisch Talks in the Humanities: The Value of Culturally Enriching Field Trips

You do NOT have to be a student (or even a Tufts alum) to attend. Everyone is welcome, just be sure to RSVP to the email at the bottom of the post so that you have a chair waiting for you! Tisch Talks in the 

Free Event TOMORROW: Artist Talk at Tufts Art Gallery

Free Event TOMORROW: Artist Talk at Tufts Art Gallery

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15
6:00-7:30pm:

Keynote Presentation and conversation with Shahzia Sikander, artist currently on exhibition titled “Shahzia Sikander: Parallax”

Sponsored by the Tufts University Art Gallery and Tufts’ Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies.
Hosted by Amy Schlegel, director of Galleries and Collections at Tufts, and Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History and Director, Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies

 

Shahzia Sikander: Parallax

September 10 – December 6, 2015
Tisch Family Gallery

Internationally-recognized artist Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969, Pakistan) presents her first immersive animation Parallax, with music and sound by composer Du Yun, conceived in the United Arab Emirates and first appearing at the Sharjah Biennale in 2013. Related paintings, drawings, and photographs are also included in the Tufts exhibition.

Inspired by the U.A.E.’s unique geography and culture at the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, Sikander’s 15-minute animation is constructed from hundreds of drawings and paintings, in which abstract, representational, and textual forms coexist and jostle for domination. Themes of dissonance and disruption echo the power tensions that have characterized the region’s modern history as a British protectorate and the U.A.E.’s establishment as a nation state in 1971.

Mesmerizing flows of imagery build in operatic intensity. Sikander’s visual vocabulary includes recurring motifs such as Gopi hair, “Christmas trees” (oil pumping mechanisms), “singing spheres,” and forearms with clenched fists. These motifs are combined to cultivate new associations within the animation’s digital space. Undulating color fields create pitch and fervor, as human voices recite poetry in Arabic, creating tension and rhythm that oscillates with environmental sounds.

A book published by the Tufts University Art Gallery, with an artist’s interview by Amy Schlegel, a conversation between Sikander and composer Du Yun, and essays by Ayesha Jalal and Sara Raza, is forthcoming in the spring of 2016.