Mar 19, 2018 | Essay, From the Chair
I was recently asked if I had a definition for the word art. I think, speak, and write about art constantly, but the question was, at the moment it was asked, unanswerable. I realized later that such a question is perhaps always lurking behind our conversations about...
Mar 12, 2018 | Essay, From the Chair
I have a copy of a book written in 1982 by the artist Robert Irwin, with which I have recently re‐engaged, called Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. I borrowed the title for a chapter in my own book in order to allude to Irwin’s idea that an...
Mar 5, 2018 | Essay, From the Chair
Tribalism. It’s a word that seems to be used, in the current moment, to describe any number of groups of which one feels an affinity for. Tribal by choice or by birth, by circumstance or by situation, all are possible organizing methods for contemporary...
Feb 26, 2018 | Essay, From the Chair
Museums are perhaps the most comforting spaces for me. Full of objects and art, thoughtfully arranged and displayed and, depending on the choices of the curators, often exhilarating to pass through. While museums vary in architectural style and in the type of objects...
