MEMORIAL LECTURES
LIGHT IN BUFFALO
by Molly Nesbit
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/
February 7
OPEN SITES: April 8, 1970
Michel Foucault Lectures on Manet at the Albright-Knox
February 19
WITHOUT WALLS: Ten Days in August 1974
Gordon Matta-Clark Cuts Bingo at Artpark
March 6
TOWARDS A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART: March 10, 1968
Marcel Duchamp’s Takes a Bow After Walkaround Time
Lectures are free but reservations are required. Email [email protected] to check reservation availability. All lectures begin at 6 p.m. at the Institute of Fine Arts, #1 East 78th
Street, NYC.
This winter the 2008 Kirk Varnedoe Memorial Lectures will be given by Molly Nesbit as a cycle called LIGHT IN BUFFALO. Each lecture begins with a case study. Collectively they provide materials, tools, and examples with which to return the problem of art history to history. The fourth wall came off the theater of art history in the late sixties, just as it came off the revolution, the philosophical concept and the work of art. What is the physical reality of a thought ripped open? a lecture? a painting? Where does a work stand? And for how long? Who speaks for it? And for how long? These were the kinds of questions that erupted and interrupted. They provide the shadow for the light in Buffalo.
As questions they are still fertile but it should be noted that they draw strength from other, earlier moves. At the beginning of the twentieth century, modern art’s way of casting history involved projections outward, beyond the object, toward the future. The future came to replace history’s long view. And yet before long this future found itself cut back and frozen, replaced by an endless present. Paradoxically, a return to history now can move us in turns both backward and forward. The friction could spark. Implicit is another question, a critical and political question: what would it mean for the work of art now to break open, to reinstall the long view forward and, at the same time, nonformally, empirically, ground it?
Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professorship
In 2006 the Institute of Fine Arts established the Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professorship to honor and perpetuate the memory of Kirk’s dedicated and innovative teaching, mentoring, and scholarship. Kirk vigorously maintained these roles at the Institute of Fine Arts throughout his career at the Museum of Modern Art and the Institute for Advanced Study. The Varnedoe Professorship and Lectures have been endowed through the generosity of Kirk’s many friends, colleagues, and students who were inspired by his work.
Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art History at Vassar College, is currently the second Varnedoe Visiting Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts-NYU.
The Institute of Fine Arts-NYU
In 2007-08, The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University celebrates its 75th Anniversary as one of the world’s leading graduate schools and research centers in art history, archaeology, and conservation. The Institute has a permanent faculty unrivalled in the breadth and depth of its expertise and unparalleled in the range of its adjunct lecturers from top museums, research institutes, and conservation studios. Since its founding, more than 1600 degrees have been conferred and its graduates hold leadership positions in arts institutions worldwide.
Image above:
Bruce Jackson, Michel Foucault, Olga Bernal and Raymond Federman, Buffalo, April 1971
Gordon Matta-Clark, Bingo, 1974
Oscar Bailey, Premiere of Walkaround Time by Merce Cunningham, 1968
