CLARK ART INSTITUTE TO PRESENT SERIES OF FREE LECTURES FROM RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PROGRAM FELLOWS

September 6, 2019

Williamstown, Massachusetts—The Clark Art Institute Research and Academic Program’s fall 2019 class of Clark Fellows will present a series of free lectures September through December. The lectures are held in the Clark’s auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center at 5:30 pm. All events are free and open to the public.

The fall lectures kick off Tuesday, September 17, at 5:30 pm, with Beinecke Fellow Jared Sexton’s talk, “Basic Black,” which considers what would happen, theoretically and practically, if all colors were re-imagined and re-envisioned as blackness in the most expansive sense. The lecture challenges individuals to address all difference—in the visual field and beyond—as the differentiation of blackness and to see nonbeing as a rich and complex quality rather than as anathema to being.

Sexton is associate professor and director of the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where he also teaches film and media studies with the PhD Programs in Culture & Theory and Visual Studies. His most recent books are Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing and Black Men, Black Feminism: Lucifer's Nocturne. His research has been supported by grants from the National Academies, the Fulbright Program, and the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Other Fellows lectures this fall include:

September 25: Anthony Grafton presents “Images in the Margins: Renaissance Readers Draw the Meanings of their Texts.” Educated Renaissance readers went through their texts pen in hand, underlining passages, adding references and short summaries, and interpreting or responding to the text. Most marginalia were written notes, but scholars also made drawings of many kinds. Grafton presents some of this work and argues that it often, though not always, had an interpretative purpose. PLEASE NOTE THIS LECTURE IS ON WEDNESDAY AND BEGINS AT 6 PM.

October 1: Mellon Network Fellow Susan Gagliardi, assistant professor of art history at Emory University, presents “Mapping Senufo: Rethinking the Scholarly Monograph in the Era of Digital Publication.” The lecture explores what published research on African arts once considered “traditional” might look like if scholars integrated theories about the construction of identities and the politics of knowledge production into their work.

October 29: Clark Fellow Jessica Horton, assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history at the University of Delaware, presents “Earth Diplomacy: Diné Arts of Reciprocity, 1966–1968.” Horton’s lecture examines Diné (Navajo) artists Bertha and Fred Stevens’ 1966–1968 tour commissioned by the United States government as an exercise of Cold War “soft power,” reframing it as a creative instance of “earth diplomacy.”

November 12: Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow Kirsten Scheid, associate professor of anthropology at the American University of Beirut, presents “Curating Jerusalem Actual and Possible: Political Lessons from a non-Euclidean City,” examining an exhibition Scheid co-curated in 2018 in Jerusalem as a process-space where actors could analyze the bundling of their lives.

December 3: Manton Fellow Jiat-Hwee Chang, associate professor in the National University of Singapore’s Department of Architecture, presents “The (Trans)formation of Air-conditioning Complexes: Architectural Histories and Futures from Asia.” Chang discusses the ways in which urban populations around the world became dependent on air-conditioning and how this dependency transforms built environments, material culture, and social practices.

ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library, consisting of more than 275,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

The Clark, which has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide, is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm; open daily in July and August. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, children 18 and younger, and students with valid ID. Free admission is available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; EBT Card to Culture; and Blue Star Museums. For more information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.

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