Propositions

Propositions is a public forum that explores ideas in development. Inspired by the scientific method of hypothesis, research, and synthesis, each two-day seminar explores a topic of current investigation in an invited speaker's own artistic or intellectual practice. Over the course of a seminar session, these developing ideas are presented to the public, responded to, "researched," and discussed to propel the ideas forward in unique ways.

The structure of Propositions is as follows:
Friday, 7:00 PM - Initial proposition and lecture
Saturday, 12:00 PM - Guest speaker responds, followed by a lunch break
Saturday, 3:00 PM - Discussion

Please stay tuned for more Propositions by these artists, curators, and thinkers.

September: Kara Walker
Kara Walker is among the most complex and prolific artists of her generation. Using drawing, painting, colored-light projections, writing, shadow puppetry, film, and video, Walker constructs a phantasmagoric mis en scene depicting historical narratives haunted by sexuality, violence, and subjugation. She has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. A 1997 recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, Walker was the United States representative to the 2002 São Paolo Bienal in Brazil. Walker teaches at the School of the Arts at Columbia University.

November 13 - 14: Nikhil Chopra
Nikhil Chopra combines strategies associated with theater, portraiture, landscape drawing, photography, art actions, and installation to chronicle the world through live performance. For these performances he embodies the largely imagined, semi-autobiographical persona of the Victorian draughtsman Yog Raj Chitrakar. As Chitrakar, the artist haunts bustling market squares, city streets, and museum galleries to make large-scale drawings. Within the performance, daily actions-washing, eating, drinking, sleeping, dressing, shaving, and observing-are transformed into ritualistic spectacle.  His seminar will be preceded by a 5-day performance, as part of PERFORMA 09, entitled "Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX." This work will be on view from October 28-February 2.

December 4 -5: Haegue Yang
Haegue Yang works primarily in sculpture, video, and installation. Her practice stems from an interest in the subtle irregularities and minute possibilities that destabilize conventional order. Through deliberate acts of erasing, misplacing, or rearranging the ordinary, Yang's work directs attention to the underlying structures that regulate perception and experience. Yang received her BFA from Seoul National University, Fine Arts College in 1994, and her MA from Städelschule Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1999. Her works have been exhibited internationally including the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh; Kunsthalle Hamburg; and Sala Rekalde, Bilbao. Yang also represented Korea at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009.

January 16 - 17: Hans Ulrich Obrist
Hans Ulrich Obrist is a museum director, curator, writer, art critic, cultural instigator, and professional conversationalist. Since 1991, Obrist has curated over 150 exhibitions internationally, including "do it", "Take Me, I'm Yours", "Live/Life", 1st Berlin Biennale, Manifesta 1, "Uncertain States of America", 1st Moscow Triennale, and 2nd Guangzhou Biennale. He is co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London, and was previously curator of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; curator of museum in progress, Vienna; and founder of Museum Robert Walser. Obrist is the author of A Brief History of Curating and the editor of Hans Ulrich Obrist: Interviews, which presents selections from the more than 300 interviews he has conducted with artists, writers, architects and thinkers.

February 19 - 20: Ute Meta Bauer
For over two decades, Uta Meta Bauer has curated exhibitions with a focus on transdisciplinary formats linked to feminist and socio-political contexts. Bauer is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Visual Arts Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. From 1996 to 2006, she was a Professor of Theory and Practice of Contemporary Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 2003-2004, Bauer was Artistic Director of the 3rd Berlin Biennial for Contemporary art, and from 1999-2002 she was co-curator of Documen ta11. Bauer was the founding editor and publisher of the art periodicals META 1-4, case, and Verksted #1-6, and in 2001 published Education, Information, Entertainment. New Approaches to Higher Artistic Education.

March 26 - 27: Rodney McMillian
Rodney McMillian's practice embraces a wide range of media to investigate social history and culture. He uses conceptual art strategies and applies them to painting to explore its relationship to language and content and its role as an artwork. His installations often incorporate various media, including video, assemblage, sculpture, and painting. In more recent video performances he reveals his intense interest in history and how past events relate to the contemporary political situation. McMillian's work has been exhibited at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Herning Art Museum in Copenhagen, and The Royal Academy in London.

April 23 - 24: Miwon Kwon
Art Historian Miwon Kwon's research and writing encompasses several disciplines including contemporary art, architecture, public art, and urban studies. Kwon is currently Associate Professor of Art History at UCLA. In addition to her curatorial experience at the Whitney Museum of American Art, she serves on many advisory boards, including October  magazine, the Hudson Valley Art Project, and the Excellence in Design Program of the U.S. General Services Administration. Kwon is the author of One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (MIT Press, 2002), and was a founding editor and publisher of Documents, a journal of art, culture, and criticism (1992-2004).

May 21 - 22: Matthew Barney
Matthew Barney creates frequently large-scale and intricately interconnected work as a sculptor, filmmaker, and performer. His work, which often features a fantastical engagement with the rituals of sports and ceremony, has addressed existential instability and transformation through the pataphysical metaphor of sexual differentiation (among other complex cosmological themes). Barney is the producer and creator of the Cremaster film cycle, Drawing Restraint 9, and numerous live performances, including a recent collaboration with Elizabeth Peyton entitled Blood of Two (2009).Matthew Barney won the Europa 2000 prize at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1996 and was the first recipient of the Guggenheim Museum's Hugo Boss Award in 1996. He received the Kaiser Ring Award in 2007.

Museum as Hub is made possible by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.

Propositions is made possible by Eve Steele and Peter Gelles, with endowment support generously provided by the Charlotte and Bill Ford Artists Talks Fund.

Banner photo: Kara Walker. Photo by Jaya Howey.