From the Chair

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...

From the Chair

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...

From the Chair

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...

From the Chair

Feb 19, 2018 | Essay, From the Chair

It is hard to write anything in the face of overwhelming grief after a public tragedy as others are burdened with mourning and loss. Perhaps there is some measure of comfort to be found in thinking about how art functions in such times, as both a balm and as a space...

From the Chair

Feb 12, 2018 | Essay, From the Chair

At this time of year, settled as we are into the deepest freeze, the landscape knit together into rectangles of pure white, the sonic quality of everyday life quiets remarkably toward silence. This observation comes as I have been talking to students about Art and...