New
Museum
Thursday 08/06/20 7PM
Conversations · Exhibition-Related

Lynn Hershman Leeson in Conversation with Margot Norton

Cover Image:

Lynn Hershman Leeson, CyberRoberta, 1996. Custom-made doll, clothing, glasses, webcam, surveillance camera, mirror, original programming, and telerobotic head-rotating system, Aprox. 17 ¾ x 17 ¾ x 7 ⅞ in (45 × 45 × 20 cm). Courtesy the artist; Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco; and Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York

A recording of this conversation is available here.

Join us for a special conversation between artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and New Museum Curator Margot Norton in advance of Hershman Leeson’s forthcoming exhibition “Twisted.” Known for her groundbreaking contributions to media art, Lynn Hershman Leeson has created an innovative and prescient body of work that mines the intersections of technology and the self. Her first solo museum show in New York will bring together a selection of her work from over fifty years in drawing, sculpture, video, photography, and interactive and net-based works, focusing on themes of transmutation, identity construction, and the evolution of the cyborg. In this conversation, Hershman Leeson and Norton will unpack some of the ideas behind the works in the exhibition, which often illuminate the political and social consequences of scientific advances on our most intimate selves. They will also discuss the process behind a new body of work Hershman Leeson is producing specifically for the exhibition, titled Twisted Gravity and developed in collaboration with the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, which incorporates newly developed technologies to purify toxicities caused by plastic and other contaminants in water.

Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941, Cleveland, OH) lives and works in San Francisco and New York. Her recent retrospective exhibition, “Civic Radar,” traveled from ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany (2014) to Deichtorhallen Hamburg / Sammlung Falckenberg, Germany (2015); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2016); and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2017). Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo Comunidad de Madrid (2019); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2018); Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel (2018); Modern Art Oxford, UK (2015); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2013), and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2007). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the de Young Museum, San Francisco (2020); The Shed, New York (2019); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2018); Whitney Museum of American Art (2017); and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); as well as international exhibitions, including the Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (2018), and the forthcoming 2020 Gwangju Biennial in Korea. Her films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival, among others. Hershman Leeson has received numerous awards, including a VIA Art Fund Award (2019), a Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), the College Art Association’s Distinguished Feminist Award (2018), the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award from the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival (2017), a United States Artists Fellowship (2016), an Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2014), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2009) and the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica (1999).

Accessibility Information:
This event will be live captioned.

Sponsors

New Museum Digital Initiatives are generously supported by Hermine and David B. Heller.

Generous ongoing support is provided by the Charlotte and Bill Ford Artist Talks Fund.

Support for Education and Public Engagement programs is provided, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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.

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