Mills College Art Lecture Series

Mills College Art Lecture Series 2011-2012

2011-10-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

Mills College Art Museum
5000 MacArthur Blvd
Oakland, CA 94613
510.430.2164
mcam.mills.edu

Museum Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday 11 am - 4 pm
Wednesday 11 am - 7:30 pm
Closed Monday
Admission is Free

Lecture Information:
All lectures take place at 7:00 pm
in Danforth Hall in Aron Art Center
unless stated otherwise.
Lectures are free and open to the public.

For more information visit
mcam.mills.edu
millslectureseries.blogspot.edu
For directions call 510.430.3250

Martha Wilson ** Oct 26
Martha Wilson: Staging the Self (Transformations, Invasions and Pushing Boundaries)
Martha Wilson will trace her work as a performance artist, activist, and the founder and ongoing Director of Franklin Furnace. She will begin in 1971 with her early “body art” in Nova Scotia, Canada, followed by her move to New York in 1974, where she continued to work as an artist. In 1976 she founded Franklin Furnace, the famous New York-based alternative art space that has for 35 years championed temporal art: artists’ books, installations, and performance art.
Lecture will be held in Lisser Theatre.

Camille Utterback *** Nov 9
Camille Utterback creates spaces for kinesthetic discovery and play using video tracking software or other sensors to react and respond to human movement and gesture. In her installation Text Rain (1999), participants use their bodies to catch and play with projected lines of a poem. In her External Measures series (2001–2007) Utterback explores the possibilities of interactive painting systems. She will also discuss her large-scale public commissions, such as Aurora Organ (2009), City of St. Louis Park, Minnesota and her recently completed commission for the Sacramento Airport. Utterback’s extensive exhibit history includes more than fifty shows on four continents. Awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2009), a Transmediale International Media Art Festival Award (2005), and a Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship (2002).

Leslie Shows * Nov 16
Leslie Shows reinvigorates the practice of landscape painting with large, materially rich pieces that conflate a vast continuum of geological and human change. Through broad gestures and intricate details, she articulates a world in which we are but fleeting specks. She has won numerous awards including an Artadia Award; Eureka Fellowship, Fleishhacker Foundation; SECA Art Award, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tournesol Award, Headlands Center for the Arts; and the Cadogan Award. Her work has been exhibited widely including four solo shows at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco.

Frances Stark Dec 7
Frances Stark is a Los Angeles-based artist and writer who completed her MFA at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA and is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California. Through performance, writing, and visual art, Stark addresses the conditions of creative labor, producing candid and affecting work about the nature of artistic practice and the corresponding yet integral banality of the everyday. She has had numerous national and international exhibitions, including solo exhibitions at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Portikus, Frankfurt; Secession, Vienna; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Kunstverein, Munich.
Presented in conjunction with Frances Stark: The whole of all of the parts as well as the parts of all the parts, on view at the Mills College Art Museum September 15 to December 11, 2011

Trevor Paglen * Jan 25
Trevor Paglen’s work deliberately blurs lines between science, contemporary art, journalism, and other disciplines to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to see and interpret the world around us. His work has been widely exhibited from the Tate Modern to the Istanbul Biennial 2009, as well as published in The New York Times, Wired, Vanity Fair, and Artforum. Paglen has received grants and awards from the Smithsonian, Art Matters, Artadia, the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, and the Aperture Foundation. He holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley, an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley. In 2011-2012, Paglen is an artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and at MIT, Cambridge.

Jennifer Steinkamp *** Feb 8
Jennifer Steinkamp is a Los Angeles-based artist who uses computer animation and new media to create projection installations that explore architectural space, motion, and phenomenological perception. Her digitally animated works show the interplay between actual and illusionistic space. Steinkamp’s recent projects and exhibitions include Five in Istanbul at the Borusan Muzik Evi in Istanbul, Turkey; Madame Curie at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and set design for Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung at the New York City Opera. In November 2011, she will participate in Prospect New Orleans, Louisiana.

Apsara DiQuinzio * Feb 15
Apsara DiQuinzio is currently assistant curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she has organized solo exhibitions with Felix Schramm, Paul Sietsema, Mai-Thu Perret, Vincent Fecteau, and R. H. Quaytman. She organized the 2008 SECA Art Award Exhibition, as well as the forthcoming 2010 iteration, and Abstract Rhythms: Paul Klee and Devendra Banhart. Formerly she worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art where she organized the exhibitions Burgeoning Geometries: Abstract Constructions and Skin Is a Language. In 2010 she received a curatorial research fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. DiQuinzio has an M.A. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute Chicago (2001), and a B.A., cum laude, from Colgate University (1998).

Laurel Nakadate * Mar 14
Laurel Nakadate is a New York-based photographer, video artist and filmmaker. Her first feature film, Stay the Same Never Change (2009), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was featured in New Directors/New Films at The Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center. Her second feature film, The Wolfe Knife, premiered at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award and Independent Spirit Award. Her work has been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and The Reina Sofia, Madrid; and her 2011 ten-year survey exhibition Only the Lonely was on held at MoMA P.S.1.

Lectures made possible with the generous support from the:
*Herringer Family Foundation
**Jane Green Endowment for Studies in Art History and Criticism
***LEF Foundation

Walking Backwards Forward, An Exhibition of New Work By Mills College Graduate Students

2011-03-29T20:43:00.000-07:00

Exhibition Dates:
May 1–29, 2011

Opening Reception:
Sat, April 30, 6:00-8:00 pm

Panel Discussion:
Sat, May 7, 5:00-7:00 pm

Oakland, CA—March 24, 2011. The Mills College Art Museum is proud to present Walking Backwards Forward, the thesis exhibition for the 2011 Master of Fine Arts degree recipients. The exhibition showcases works by a promising group of emerging artists created during their graduate program in the Mills College MFA studio program. The exhibition is curated by Stephanie Hanor, Director of the Mills College Art Museum.

Walking Backwards Forward features work by Alexa Alexander, Sholeh Asgary, Sohyung Choi, Hilary Galián, Sarah Hirneisen, Amy M. Ho, Emily Hoyt, David Johnson, Danielle Lawrence, Chelsea Pegram, David Sleeth and Alexander Treu.

According to Hanor, “Walking Backwards Forwards demonstrates not only the high quality of the work produced by the Mills MFA candidates, but also their dedication to continually pushing themselves to stretch and test their artistic capabilities.”

David Sleeth explores his interests in archeology through experimentation with materiality and form. His aim is to manipulate the perceived context of objects allowing the viewer to re-imagine their understanding of the world around them and their place within it. Using the metaphor of a knot, Sarah Hirneisen’s sculptures explore heritage, human relationships, and memory, creating logical connections between complicated systems.

In a climate of porous borders, Hilary Galián paints real and unreal places to investigate the condition of connectedness and belonging. David Johnson wants you to know that the world is made up of all sorts of ordinary things, but most importantly, it is made up of the interactions between these things. Through various time-based methods, he examines these interactions in order to better grasp the sum and the parts of the past, present and future. Sholeh Asgary is interested in exploring how memories are a fusion of fact and subjective filter. Through memory, the abstract and representational aspects of our experiences become intertwined, and in her mixed media works, she attempts a literal representation of this phenomenon.

Danielle Lawrence playfully investigates the perception of both formal and psychological space within traditional and hybrid offerings of representation. The resulting videos, paintings and sculptures explore illusions of security in our ever-changing social and environmental landscapes. Emily Hoyt questions how we can see the world fully when our emotional perspective is constantly changing. She creates installations using light, shadow, and linear forms as a way to frame the surroundings, underscoring our limited ability to grasp them in their entirety. Through her sculptural work, Chelsea Pegram explores a visceral mode of perception in which line and space are sensed and tactilely navigated as a way to reconsider our methods of making meaning.

Re-appropriating found photography, Alexa Alexander investigates how photographs are viewed and remembered. By physically dissecting and fragmenting photographs, she redirects the viewer’s focus to the act of looking while emphasizing recollection. Amy M. Ho builds video and spatial installation works that bring attention to the duality of our existence as both physical and psychological beings.

Every consumer product has a story about its origin, a story that reveals an alternative history of our lives. Through mixed media installations, Alexander Treu demonstrates his obsession with the food industry’s manipulation of our minds and bodies. Sohyung Choi’s large-scale, multimedia installation works explore self and cultural identity.

Special Events (please visit our website for updated details):

Sat, April 30, 6:00-8:00 pm
Art Museum
Opening Reception for Walking Backwards Forward

Sat, May 7, 5:00-7:00 pm
Art Museum
Panel Discussion with the MFA Artists moderated by Glen Helfand

Stephanie Syjuco Lecture 4/6

2011-03-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 6th 7:00pm - 8:00pm, Danforth Lecture Hall

STEPHANIE SYJUCO's recent work uses the tactics of bootlegging, reappropriation, and fictional fabrications to address issues of cultural biography, labor, and economic globalization. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her projects leverage open-source systems, shareware logic, and flows of capital, creating frictions between high ideals and everyday materials. This has included starting a global collaborative project with crochet crafters to counterfeit high-end consumer goods; presenting a parasitic art counterfeiting event, "COPYSTAND: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone" for Frieze Projects, London (2009); and “Shadowshop,” an alternative vending outlet embedded at SFMOMA exploring the ways in which artists are navigating the production, consumption, and dissemination of their work (2010).www.stephaniesyjuco.com

Sharon Lockhart Lecture 3/31

2011-03-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Thursday March 31st @ 7:00 pm Mills College, Fine Arts Annex 106

Los Angeles-based artist Sharon Lockhart creates films and photographs that are at once rigorously formal and deeply humanistic, meticulously observing the details of everyday life while also exploring the limits and intersections between the two mediums. Her work has been exhibited at major museums worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Kunsthalle Zürich, and the Vienna Secession. Her project Lunch Break, 2008, is currently the subject of a solo show at Gio Marconi in Milan and will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in October 2011. Sharon teaches undergraduate photography and is a member of the MFA Core Faculty at the University of Southern California Roski School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles.

This lecture has been generously founded by the LEF foundation.

Bill Brown Lecture 3/16

2011-03-03T09:31:00.000-08:00

The Mills College Art Lecture Series presents Bill Brown
Wednesday March 16, 2011 at 7:00 pm,
Danforth Lecture Hall in the Aron Art Center
Lecture made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation

Bill Brown is a filmmaker from the “Paris of the Plains,” Lubbock, Texas. He has made several short experimental documentaries about the dusty corners of the North American landscape. His work has screened at museums and festivals around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, Rotterdam, and Sundance. Along with Sabine Gruffat, he has created Bike Box, a roving, mobile media bicycle library that allows cyclists to explore the urban soundscape.

All lectures are free and open to the public

Marie Watt Lecture

2011-02-08T20:31:00.000-08:00

Mills College Art Lecture Series presents Marie Watt
February 23, 2011 7:00 pm
Danforth Lecture Hall in the Aron Art Center
Lecture made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation

Marie Watt is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in Seattle in 1967 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her approach to art-making is shaped by the proto- Feminism of Iroquois matrilineal custom, a discourse on social practice, as well as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Like Jasper Johns, she is interested in "things that the mind already knows." Unlike the Pop artists, she use a vocabulary of natural materials (stone, cornhusks, wool, cedar) and forms (blankets, pillows, bridges) that are universal to human experience (though not uniquely American) and noncommercial in character.

All lectures are free & open to the public

Paul Kos Lecture Wednesday 11/17/10 @ 7:00

2010-11-09T20:43:00.000-08:00

Mills College Art Lecture Series presents Paul Kos

Wednesday November 17, 2010 at 7:00 pm,

Danforth Lecture Hall in the Aron Art Center
Lecture made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation

Since the early 1970’s Paul Kos’s work has challenged conventions of art media and subject matter. For a global audience he staged new possibilities for artistic treatments of time, space and cultural systems.

Kos, one of the founders of the Bay Area conceptual movement, has exhibited internationally and has work represented in major museum collections including New York’s MoMA, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, SFMoMA, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Lectures are free and open to the public

Jim Campbell Lecture Wednesday 10/27/10 @ 7pm

2010-10-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

Mills College Art Lecture Series presents Jim Campbell
Wednesday October 27, 2010 at 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall in the
Aron Art Center
Lecture made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation

Jim Campbell was born in Chicago in 1956 and lives in San Francisco. He received 2 Bachelor of Science Degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from MIT in 1978. His work has been shown internationally and throughout North America in institutions such as the Whitney Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Carpenter Center, Harvard University; The International Center for Photography, New York, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Intercommunication Center in Tokyo. His electronic art work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum and the University Art Museum at Berkeley. In 1992 he created one of the first permanent public interactive video artworks in the United States in Phoenix, Arizona, and is currently working on large scale permanent public artworks at the San Diego Airport, and a collaborative work with Werner Klotz at The New San Francisco Central Subway, Union Square Market St. Station. He has lectured on interactive media art at many Institutions throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in NY. He has received many grants and awards including a Rockefeller Grant in Multimedia, three Langlois Foundation Grants, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. As an engineer he holds almost twenty patents in the field of video image processing.

Lectures are free and open to the public

Tom Marioni Lecture Wednesday 10/6/10 @ 7:00

2010-09-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

Please join us for Tom Marioni's Lecture on 10.06.2010 @ 7:00 pm in the Danforth Lecture Hall

Tom Marioni pioneered the use of social situations as art and explored performance as sculptural actions using sound, drawing, photography, and installation. Marioni was born in 1937 in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended the Cincinnati Art Academy, and in 1959 moved to San Francisco, where he still lives. His first sound work, One Second Sculpture, 1969, was celebrated in the 2005 Lyon Biennial as presaging the work of many artists today who use sound and duration as subjects. His first museum show was in 1970 at the Oakland Museum of California. Titled “The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art,” it was an early example of social activity as art.

Mills Art Lecture Series 2010-2011

2010-08-12T08:35:00.001-07:00

Binh Danh; September 8, 2010, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall
Misha Glouberman; September 29, 2010, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall
Tom Marioni; October 6, 2010, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall
Kathryn Spence; October 13, 2010, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall
Jim Campbell; October 27, 2010, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall
Paul Koss; November 17, 2010, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall
Laerke Laurta; January 19, 2011, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall
Marie Watt; February 23, 2011, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall
Bill Brown; March 16, 2011, 7:00 pm, Danforth Lecture Hall

Between You and ME, Mills College MFA Thesis Exhibition 2010

2010-04-04T22:56:00.000-07:00

BETWEEN YOU AND ME

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 1, 2010, 6-9 pm

Exhibition Dates: Sunday, May 2 to Sunday, May 30, 2010

The Mills College Art Museum is proud to present Between You and Me, the thesis exhibition for the 2010 Master of Fine Arts degree recipients. The exhibition showcases works by a promising group of emerging artists created during their graduate program in the Mills College MFA studio program. The exhibition is curated by Stephanie Hanor, Director of the Mills College Art Museum.

Between You and Me features work by Nic Buron, Joey Castor, Chris Fraser, Dana Hemenway, Kija Lucas, Bobby Lukas, Monica Lundy, Kate Stirr, Adam Vermeire and Doug G. Williams.

Driven by the desire to cultivate a sense of wonder, Kate Stirr creates otherworldly creatures, portrayed through drawings, video, and as sculpture, which explore the mysterious place between nature and artifice. Chris Fraser creates situations that address the links between light, pictures and experience. His installations isolate and idealize everyday occurrences: an open door, a curtain, the way the sunlight projects through the branches of a tree.

Nic Buron uses photography to examine the complexities of "place" and "placelessness,” focusing on Treasure Island, a location with a long history of transformation. Alternately, Bobby Lukas' sculptural work provides an avenue for voluntary simplicity and quiet romance, creating a contrast to the excesses of everyday
life.

Dana Hemenway is interested in how we understand and frame objects and experiences. She is fascinated with forms of aesthetic display. The resulting work ranges from video to sculpture to site-specific installation.

Kija Lucas uses the home environment as a setting to investigate the personal fairytale, stories that we tell in order to explain who we are. Her large-scale photographs are recreations of seemingly inconsequential moments that have changed the course of a
single lifetime or impacted several generations. With a similar interest in autobiography, Adam Vermeire explores how race continues to impact his life, searching for answers that cannot be found.

Joey Castor addresses various aspects of physical labor, focusing on how the repetitive, meditative and physical motions affect the body and mind. Monica Lundy's investigations of historical California criminals manifest in a series of paintings and sculpture that explore identity perception in relation to systems of social classification.

Doug G. Williams investigates the psychology of perception and persuasion in videos and interactive installations that are at once uncanny, humorous, and intimate.

The Mills College Art Museum, founded in 1925, is a dynamic center for art that focuses on the creative work of women as artists and curators. The Museum strives to engage and inspire the diverse and distinctive cultures of the Bay Area by presenting innovative exhibitions by emerging and established national and international artists. Exhibitions are designed to challenge and invite reflection upon the profound complexities of contemporary culture.

Mills College Art Museum
5000 MacArthur Boulevard
Oakland, CA 94613

510.430.2164

http://www.mills.edu/museum

Museum Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday 11:00-4:00pm
Wednesday 11:00-7:30pm
Closed Mondays

Admission is free for all exhibitions and programs.

MILLS COLLEGE ART MUSEUM
DATE: March 31, 2010

PRESS CONTACTS:
Lori Chinn, Program Manager, lchinn@mills.edu
Chris Fraser, Press Contact, cfraser@mills.edu
Abby Lebbert, Publicity Assistant, alebbert@mills.edu

Vito Acconci 3/31

2010-03-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

VITO ACCONCI, Words/ Action/ Architecture

Presented by the Technology and Society Lecture Series at Mills College
Wednesday March 31, 2010 at 7:30 pm, Littlefield Concert Hall, Music Building

Please join Mills in welcoming artist Vito Acconci Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 7:30pm in the Littlefield Concert Hall, (located in the Music Building) at Mills College.

Vito Acconci’s design and architecture stems from his work as a writer and visual artist. His performances in the 70’s helped shift art from object to interactions between the artist and viewer. His installations treated visitors to the gallery/museum not as viewers but as inhabitants of and participants in a public space. By the late 80’s his work had crossed over, and he formed Acconci Studio. The operations of Acconci Studio emerged from computer-thinking, and mathematical and biological models in which they treated architecture as occasions for activity and made spaces fluid, changeable, and portable. They have recently completed an artificial island in Graz, a clothing store in Tokyo, and an elevated subway-station in Coney Island. Currently, Acconci Studio is building a perimeter in Toronto and a street that runs through a building in Indianapolis. They are also working on a three-story building in Milan, a bridge-system and park near Delft, and an amphitheatre in Stavanger.

This event is free and open to the public

Lisa Anne Auerbach 3/17

2010-03-08T15:26:00.000-08:00

Lisa Anne Auerbach
March 17, 2010, 7:30pm

Lisa Anne Auerbach runs a modest publishing and propaganda empire out of a
former stuccolow in south Los Angeles. When she's not on her bike, she's
knitting inflammatory, slogan-adorned sweaters and banners, making
photographs of overlooked landmarks, and putting small publications out into
the big world. She received her Mfa from Art Center College of Design in
Pasadena, California and her BFA from Photography Rochester Institute of
Technology in Rochester, New York. She is the recipient of a 2007 California
Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists and is represented by
Gavlak, West Palm Beach, Florida.

Lecture made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation

VITO ACCONCI, Words/ Action/ Architecture 3/31

2010-03-05T20:34:00.001-08:00

Presented by the Technology and Society Lecture Series at Mills College
Wednesday March 31st 2010 at 7:30 p.m.
Lisser Theatre, Mills College 5000 MacArthur Blvd. Oakland, CA 94613
This event is free and open to the public

The Technology and Society Lecture Series at Mills College is pleased to be hosting Vito Acconci who will be presenting his lecture titled, “Words/ Action/ Architecture” on Wednesday March 31st 2010 at 7:30 p.m. in the Lisser Theatre.

Vito Acconci’s design and architecture comes from another direction: a background first in writing and then in art. His performances in the 70’s helped shift art from object to interactions between artist and viewer; his installations treated visitors to the gallery/museum not as viewers but as inhabitants of and participants in a public space. By the late 80’s his work had crossed over, and he formed Acconci Studio; their operations come from computer-thinking, and mathematical and biological models -- they treat architecture as occasions for activity -- they make spaces fluid, changeable, portable. They have recently completed an artificial island in Graz, a clothing store in Tokyo, an elevated subway-station in Coney Island. About to be built is a building perimeter in Toronto and a street through a building in Indianapolis. They are currently working on a three-story building in Milan, a bridge-system and park near Delft, and an amphitheatre in Stavanger.

Please join us for the lecture at the Lisser Theatre located at Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd. Oakland, CA 94613. Mills is located immediately off of Highway 580 in Oakland at the junction of 580 (MacArthur Freeway) and Highway 13 (Warren Freeway), approximately seven miles from the Bay Bridge.

Anthony Discenza Lecture 3/03

2010-02-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

Anthony Discenza

3/03/10 - 7:30 PM

Danforth Lecture Hall

Anthony Discenza has a graduate degree in Film and Video from California College of Art and an undergraduate degree in Studio Art from Wesleyan University. His work is directed by a preoccupation with interrupting the flow of information in various formats, primarily in video, but also other media such as computer generated sound, text, and imagery. Discenza’s video works have been screened widely nationally and internationally, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Australian Center for the Moving Image, the Whitney Museum of American Art—and most recently at the Getty Center and the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. His work has garnered critical attention in Artforum, Artweek, and ArtReview, among other publications.He lives and works in Oakland, California.

Phil Ross February 19th

2010-02-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

Phil Ross
February 19, 2010, 7:30pm

Phil Ross received his MFA from Stanford and his BFA from SFAI and is
currently a Professor of Sculpture at the University of San Francisco. His
creative work resides in the space between art, technology, education, and
the history and philosophies of science. Ross has grown and designed
biotechnological structures that are at once highly crafted and naturally
formed, skillfully manipulated and sloppily organic.

Robert Irwin 2/11 7:30 pm

2010-02-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

Robert Irwin February 11, 2010, 7:30 pm Littlefield Concert Hall

Robert Irwin has been one of the pivotal artists in American Art for more than 46 years both as a practitioner, a theoretician, and a teacher. Irwin began his career as an abstract expressionist; however, by the late 1960s he had moved away from painting to become one of the creators of the art of light and space, using ephemeral materials such as scrim, lighting and orientation to alter and heighten the viewers' perception of the space in which they encountered his work. Since the early 1980s Irwin has won an international reputation for his "site-generated" works in public spaces, which often make intimate use of site conditions, architecture, natural elements, plantings and topographic features.

Irwin received his art education at Otis Art Institute, Jepsons Art Institute and Chouinards Art Institute (1948-1954). Later, Irwin taught at Chouinards (1957-58), University of California, Los Angeles (1962), and in 1968-69, he developed the graduate program at the University of California, Irvine, working with a number of now successful artists such as Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Vija Celmins, Alexis Smith and Chris Burden among others.

Lecture presented by the Correnah W. Wright Endowed Fund

Trisha Brown Artist Lecture 1/27 5:30 PM

2010-01-24T20:09:00.000-08:00

Trisha Brown January 27, 2010, 5:30 PM  Trisha Brown is widely considered to be the most important choreographer to emerge from the postmodern era. Since graduating from Mills College in 1958 with a degree in dance, Brown has become widely acclaimed for her maverick spirit and ability to push the human body to perform in unexpected ways. Unafraid to challenge new genres, she has choreographed opera, jazz, classical music, and ballet over the course of her storied career. Founding her own company in 1970, Brown explored the terrain of her adoptive SoHo, creating her early dances for alternative spaces including roof tops and walls, and flirting with gravity--alternately using it and defying it. Recognized as a visual artist as well as a dancer, Brown was invited to participate in Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, garnering much critical acclaim.*  Presented in conjunction with the traveling exhibition, T*risha Brown: So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing*, organized by the Walker Art Center, which will be on view at the Mills College Art Museum from January 20-March 14, 2010.

Patty Chang Lecture

2009-11-14T13:24:00.000-08:00

*Patty Chang* November 18, 7:30pm*  *Patty Chang received her BA from University of California, San Diego, she currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been exhibited nationwide and internationally at such institutions as the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA; Deste Foundation Center for Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece; the Fri-Art Centre d'Art Contemporian Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland; the Hamburg Kunstverein in Germany and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain.

2009-11-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, November 4th at 7:30pm in Danforth, the Painting and Drawing Department will be hosting a lecture by three abstract painters: Stephan Fritsch, Leonhard Hurzlmeier, and Brent Hallard. This lecture will be a small group discussion about abstraction in contemporary art practice as well as an opportunity to hear from artists who work internationally. Each artist will make a 20 minute presentation of their work and then Robin McDonnell will moderate the discussion. Although the program begins at 7:30pm, there will be an opportunity to mingle with the artists while enjoying pizza and beer at 7pm.

Stephan Fritsch
http://www.stephanfritsch.de/
http://www.galerie-ebbers.de/index.php?id=46,0,0,1,0,0

Leonhard Hurzlmeier
http://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/59602-leonhard-hurzlmeier

Brent Hallard
http://www.brenthallard.com/work/index.shtml

Uta Barth Lecture October 21st

2009-10-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

We are very excited to present Uta Barth as part of our Artist Lecture Series.
October 21, 7:30pm*

*German-born, American-based artist Utha Barth is among the key recent figures who have brought photography to the prominent position once occupied by painting. Her photographs of interior and exterior, urban and natural environments capture fleeting moments as if glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye, where we become aware of the beauty of everyday light, space, texture and luminous surfaces. Barth's work has been exhibited at museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. She was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 2004-05.*

*All programs will take place in Danforth Lecture Hall, Art Building unless noted.*

Art 21 Season 5 sneak peek

2009-10-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

We are very lucky and excited to get a chance to screen a couple of sneak peeks of the BRAND NEW season of Art 21. Last Wednesday we had our first screening, we watched Part 3. We were very pleased to have the art critic/art historian Glen Helfand give a short presentation introducing the episode.

Next Wednesday we will be screening Part 1, at 7:15 pm in the Danforth Lecture Hall. Please join us!

Pae White Lecture

2009-10-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

Last week we had artist Pae White fill the Danforth Lecture Hall for a great lecture.

Pae was speaking as part of the Mills Artist Lecture Series.

Here's some info about Pae White and the lecture.

*Pae White September 30, 7:30pm   Presented in conjunction with *Pae White: In Between the Inside-Out* on view at the Mills College Art Museum from September 2-October 18, 2009. This exhibition has been co-produced by New Langton Arts, San Francisco. Major support for the production of Pae White's show has been received from the LEF Foundation, the FOR-SITE Foundation and a San Francisco Arts Commission Organization Project Grant.

YOUNG AMERICANS & MFA Open Studios

2009-05-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

If you missed the opening reception, the Mills College MFA Thesis Exhibition is up and running through the month of May.

Also, this Saturday from 1pm to 6pm, the Spring 2009 Mills College MFA Open Studios. Come see the work and talk with the 22 MFA students currently enrolled in this unique MFA program. It's a wonderful setting and the museum is located next door.

For directions click here.

YOUNG AMERICANS

2009-04-30T08:12:00.001-07:00

Exhibition Dates: Sunday, May 3 to Sunday May 31, 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 2, 2009. 7 to 9pm

The Mills College Art Museum is proud to present Young Americans, featuring works by the 2009 Master of Fine Arts degree recipients. This exhibition provides an opportunity to see works in all media created by a promising group of emerging artists eager to share what they have been developing during their graduate program with a broader audience. This year's exhibition is curated by Terri Cohn, Bay Area writer, independent curator, and faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute.

In the brochure accompanying the exhibition, Cohn observes that the ten artists who will receive their MFA degrees this year are unusual in their choice to name their MFA show Young Americans. The title situates them as citizens emerging within a national context, and suggests that in addition to their collective experiences as youthful Americans-with the burden of history this implies, this identity also affords them an intrinsic right to personal freedom. A desire for a sense of security-articulated in various metaphoric and formal ways-is one fundamental concern expressed through their work.

Kate Pszotka's fascination with the idea of home and stability has motivated her consideration of family members, which she represents iconographically with everyday objects, realized as paper cut out line drawings. Gina Tuzzi's seemingly simple, naïve structures-houses, barns, huts-stacked on trucks to become rolling homes, or represented as drawings, underscore a sense of safety and comfort in the mythic past of coastal California.

In related ways, Esther Traugot's knitted tree sweaters and forest of trunks with projected flower pattern coverings suggest the utopian potential of the natural world, as well as her desire to protect and preserve it. By contrast, Leigh Merrill's large-scale photographs explore the relationship between fantasy and reality in our constructed environments, blending urban and suburban architecture and landscape styles, or cut and artificial flowers. Modesto Covarrubias has spent much time creating rooms and shelters as means to define and express his fears, insecurities, and sense of vulnerability, while Andrew Witrak's sculptures pose slightly ridiculous solutions to the question of what can provide some fleeting impression of safety or exit: lifejackets sewn together; a beeswax boarding pass. Annie Vought translates found handwritten letters to wall-mounted versions created with cutout text, fragile portraits of each author that are reminiscent of silhouettes.

Joseph Berryhill's paintings express a tension between order and chaos, proposing ways that animate experience can be distilled into visual experience. Steuart Pittman's abstract paintings reflect what he calls a "longing for quiet beauty in a chaotic, high-speed age," while Brian Caraway creates tools and rules to implement his mixed media works, relating his process-based investigations through texture as they change over time.

As artists who have come of age in the extraordinarily volatile circumstances of the 21st century, these individuals focus on singular modes of expression as a way to make sense of and stake a claim in their separate and collective futures. Their works express a sense of hope and possibility, going forward into their lives as young Americans.

In addition to an essay by Cohn, the illustrated catalog for Young Americans contains an essay by critic Glen Helfand. This publication will be available in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.

Mills College Art Museum

5000 MacArthur Boulevard

Oakland, CA 94613

510.430.2164

http://www.mills.edu/museum/

Museum Hours:

Tuesday-Sunday 11:00-4:00pm

Wednesday 11:00-7:30pm

Monday Closed

Admission is free for all exhibitions and programs.

Spring Is Here!

2009-04-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Young Americans and Open Studios on the horizon...

The Senior Thesis Exhibition, Meridian, just closed this past weekend. Now, the graduate students are gearing up for the MFA Thesis Exhibition as well as Spring 2009 Open Studios.

Come back for updates...

Mills College MFA Open Studios Blog Page: http://millsmfaopenstudios.blogspot.com/

Mary Heilmann - Thursday April 16, 2009

2009-04-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

The Mills College Art Department's annual Correnah Wright art lecture will feature artist Mary Heilmann on April 16 at 7:30 pm at the Littlefield Concert Hall, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613. The event is free and all members of the public are invited.

The New York Times describes Heilmann's work as "wildly colorful abstractions that riff with irreverent verve on basic elements of Modernist painting: the grid, the monochromatic rectangle, stripes, organic forms, linear webs, spots, checks, and drips...She makes it look easy and fun...the final picture almost always seems spontaneous, and her lively touch gives her works a sensuous intimacy."

The New Yorker said she is "a formalist impatient with formal consistency" and describes her technique as "Big, fluid strokes often seem to sail, albeit invisibly, into surrounding space. When she does emphasize the edge, it's as if she were observing the arbitrary rules of a rather silly but interesting game."

Heilmann will present Her Life which is a multimedia presentation she said is arranged in a poetic rather than linear narrative tale. "I'd like the people that are watching it to get a feeling for how it felt to be making that work," she said.

Her recent exhibition Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone was at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.

Heilmann, 68, is a California native who grew up in San Francisco. She received a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1962, and a MA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967. In 1968, Heilmann went to New York City to try to break into the minimalism and post-minimalism art scene dominated by male artists. She came as a woman, a Californian, and a painter and with that she faced challenges from the art establishment.

"She's an inspiration," said Mills College art professor and head of the department Ron Nagle, "She stuck to her guns, got into fights with the art world, but didn't change her style."

Nagle, who knew Heilmann when they were at UC Berkeley together where she originally trained in ceramics, calls Heilmann a "minimalist with a funky edge."

Her colorful, playful, and abstract painted works range from truncated drips of paint to nesting canvases and looping brushstrokes, but she also creates chairs and ceramics.

While her works have been in major galleries and museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, for more than three decades, their price have only recently escalated with the demand from collectors clamoring for them. In the late 1990s, the Hauser & Wirth gallery in London, which represents her, also began cultivating an audience for her in Europe.

Heilmann's current auction record for a single work is $169,000, set at Sotheby's in May 2008 for The Yellow Blue of the Square Pair, 1976, which sold for $38,4000 only four years earlier. However, 303 Gallery in New York, which also represents Heilmann, said her large paintings sell for about $300,000.

Each year the Mills College Art Department sponsors a practicing artist for the Correnah Wright lecture. The annual event gives graduate studio art students access to some of the top artists in the country. More information about this selective art program is available at www.mills.edu/art.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering a dynamic progressive education that fosters leadership, social responsibility, and creativity to approximately 950 undergraduate women and 500 graduate women and men. Since 2000, applications to Mills College have more than doubled. The College is one of the top colleges in the West by U.S. News & World Report, one of the Best 368 Colleges by the Princeton Review, and ranks 75th among America's best colleges by Forbes.com. Visit us at www.mills.edu.

Mills College Senior Thesis Show 2009: Meridian

2009-04-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

April 1 to April 19, 2009. Mills College Art Museum.

The Mills College Art Museum announces Meridian, the 2009 Mills College Senior Exhibition. Meridian features work by 15 undergraduate students who have studied with Mills College art faculty - Jesus Aguilar, Jennifer Brandon, Ken Burke, Freddy Chandra, Julie Chen, James Fei, Michael Hall, Samara Halperin, Hung Liu, Robin McDonnell, Anna Valentina Murch, Ron Nagle, Sean Olson, Dharma Strasser MacColl, Michael Temperio, Deirdre Visser, Catherine Wagner, and Ethan Worden.

Alison Ashcraft layers photographs of the American landscape with drawings that question the psychology of the national culture.

Cherise Bentosino uses ready-made materials in modular sculptures to bring a renewed scientific and artistic perspective on the unnoticed patterns of our universe.

Danica Collins works with clay and other materials to abstract memories and history.

Cocoa Costales confronts and dissects trends of addiction and methods of consumption in her work. Using painting and photography, she navigates the complex relationship between person and product.

Amanda Cronkright works with oil paint to come face to face with herself.

Maryam Epting works with photography and video to consider and accommodate contradictions.

Kathalina Ho's paintings explore the particulars of the ways we live as individuals and as a community.

Amelia Hogan's work consists of mixed media pine boxes referencing the tenuous subject of child abuse and the internal dialogue that is often forgotten in external discussions.

Eunjee Lee paints with charcoal and oil pastels on paper and mylar about the restoration of destroyed buildings to console people in their sorrow.

Sophie Leininger creates large scale paintings to explore how metaphor may construct myth and humanness.

Anne Magratten is a painter with an obsession for the body as a medium of emotion.

Jennifer Martin explores color relationships, the viewer's interaction with them, and emphasizes the creative process through using randomization and chance as a determining factor in her work.

Lily Ann Page creates fashion-inspired, ambiguous narratives through photography.

Vivianna Peña shares her history and personal experiences, which root from her Mexican and Chicano upbringing, through illustration in ink and paint.

Meryl Rose Phillips uses video installation to tackle the longstanding issues and connotations that come along with living above or below the social and federal boundary of the U.S. Interstate 580 in Oakland, California.

Public Program

Special Event with Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company
Wednesday, April 15, 2009, 7:00-9:00pm
Mills College Art Museum
Suggested donation $5.00 (sliding scale)

The Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company (DAYPC) is a multicultural group of teens who create original performance art pieces, in collaboration with professional artists, that combine hip-hop, modern, and aerial dance, theater, martial arts, song and rap. DAYPC comes out of Destiny Arts Center, an Oakland-based nonprofit violence prevention and arts education organization that has been serving youth for over 20 years, through after-school, summer and weekend programs in dance, theater, martial arts, conflict resolution, self-defense, and youth leadership at our Oakland center and in over 25 East Bay public schools and other community centers.

Click here for more information.

Thank You Clare!

2009-03-12T13:53:00.001-07:00

On behalf of all the grads in the Art Department here at Mills, thank you Clare Rojas!

We had a great day, and your lecture was the most eloquent and perfect way to end our lecture series for 2008-2009.

For those who missed it, check out her tunes here: Peggy Honeywell

It was like honey for dinner, indeed!

Love, the MFAs in Studio Art at Mills College, 2008-2009 (aka the 10 + 12).

Clare Rojas - Wednesday, March 11, 2009

2009-03-05T21:19:00.000-08:00

Untitled, 2007

gouache and latex on canvas

Artist Lecture by Clare Rojas

Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 7:30 pm

Danforth Lecture Hall, Art Center, Mills College Campus

In Clare Rojas' works, women, men, nature and animals are strong and weak caring and connected to one another in their struggle to find harmony and balance. She celebrates women for their traditional and most basic differences and strengths. While the characters are often imbued with feelings of loss and nostalgia, one gets the sense that they will not back down. They will ultimately beat their predators at their own game.

At Gallery Paule Anglim, Clare Rojas recently exhibited new paintings in her signature gouache technique placing figures in a crisp and colorful landscape. Combining features of cartoon and folk art, her paintings depict sexual role reversals with the male as the object of a critical (and mocking!) female gaze. Rojas blends ironic spice into the expected charm of her visual treats.

Clare Rojas has shown widely in the United States and abroad. She has enjoyed major solo exhibitions at Deitch Projects in New York and the MCA Chicago. A seminal figure in the "Mission School," Rojas remains a major influence in the Bay Area and performs regularly as the musician Peggy Honeywell.

This is the final lecture in the MFA Lecture series for 2008-2009.

This lecture is made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation.

Angela Dufresne

2009-02-25T10:16:00.000-08:00

Imitation of Life, or why Queen Jane Should be Approximately

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

7:30 pm

Danforth Lecture Hall

In her paintings, New York-based Angela Dufresne irreverently concocts imaginary communities that satisfy her vision for the world. She describes her paintings, which bring together disparate sources from film, music, architecture, and the history of painting, as "mashups"--hybrids. Dufresne has also had recent solo exhibitions at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, and at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

Angela Dufresne's lecture is presented in conjunction with Painting the Glass House, currently on view at the Mills College Art Museum through March 22, 2009.

A Message to Keith Boadwee...

2009-02-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

Dearest Keith, the graduates at Mills feel the same way. What a fantastic day it was, indeed. We clink our beer and wine glasses with your gimlet glass . "CLINK"

(From Keith Boadwee's Blog...click here)

KEITH BOADWEE

2009-02-11T18:41:00.000-08:00

The Mills College MFA students in Studio Art have invited California artist Keith Boadwee to lecture in Danforth Hall, Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 7:30pm.

Keith Boadwee studies at UCLA in the 80s where he worked with Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden. Boadwee's work achieved notoriety in the 90s when grouped with other artists in the arena of identity politics. His works have been exhibited at venues such as the Venice Biennale, MOCA Los Angeles and P.S. 1.

This lecture is made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation.

Spring 2009 at Mills College

2009-01-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

Tonight:

Opening reception for the exhibition Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture.

5:30 to 7:30 pm

with a walkthrough by the curators at 6pm

This exhibition runs through March 22, 2009.

Reminder about the Spring Art Lecture Series at Mills College:

Sunday, Feb. 1, 2009

Aaron Betsky, Blob Utopia: Digital Destiny or Aesthetic Escape?

presented in conjunction with Painting the Glass House

3pm, Danforth Lecture Hall

Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009

Keith Boadwee

Mills College MFA Lecture Series 08-09*

7:30pm, Danforth Lecture Hall

Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009

Angela Dufresne, Imitation of Life, or why Queen Jane Should be Approximately

presented in conjunction with Painting the Glass House

7:30pm, Danforth Lecture Hall

Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2009

Clare Rojas

Mills College MFA Lecture Series 08-09*

7:30pm, Danforth Lecture Hall

Please note, the last two lectures in the series, Astria Suparak and Teresa Foley, have been postponed indefinitely. Please check back for updates.

*The Mills College MFA Lecture Series is made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation.

Eyebeam Roadshow - Workshop Schedule

2008-11-12T12:31:00.000-08:00

Workshops to begin around 2:00 pm.

ERS 101 - Avant Garde and Parties: Since its inception in the Parisian cabarets, avant-garde creativity has been associated with partying. David Jimison will cover the historical avant-garde's use of parties, cabarets, night clubs, and beer halls as spaces of intervention and performance. From Futurist manifestos through '60s Happenings and into contemporary practices, distinct methodologies will be discussed.

Instructor: David Jimison
Location: Danforth Lecture Hall

ERS 102 - Inspiring an Online Workforce: Steve Lambert and Jeff Crouse will talk about their experiences working with strangers on the Internet to accomplish specific tasks. Hands-on activities may include

1) starting a Google Code/Sourceforge project
2) using the online labor market (Mechanical Turk)

3) making friends you never knew you had through online collaboration.

Instructors: Steve Lambert and Jeff Crouse

Location: TBA

ERS 107 - Shopdropping: Learn how to reverse shoplift your artwork into stores with Steve Lambert, a former undercover investigator. Plus, how to be a superhero.
Instructor: Steve Lambert

Location: TBA (off-site)

ERS 105 - Ear Cleaning: Andrea Polli will introduce you to field recording and free software for sound editing projects by taking you through a series of "ear cleaning" exercises, including a neighborhood soundwalk with various microphones and recording devices.
Instructor: Andrea Polli

Location: Prieto Lab

The finalized schedule of workshops and locations will be announced at the beginning of the lecture on Saturday. Please check this blog for updates.

Eyebeam Roadshow - Saturday November 15, 2008

2008-11-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

The Eyebeam Roadshow is what you get when you mix a rock 'n roll tour with the fine fellows of New York City's Eyebeam Art and Technology Center.

Please join us for a lecture about the Center with workshops to follow (full schedule posted shortly):

Lecture & Introduction at 12:00 Noon, Saturday November 15, 2008.

Danforth Lecture Hall, Art Center, Mills College

Workshops to begin at 2:00 pm.

This event is made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation.

Favianna Rodriguez

2008-10-28T15:04:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, October 29, 2008
7:30pm
Danforth Lecture Hall, Aron Art Center

Favianna Rodriguez is a printmaker and digital artist based in Oakland. Using high-contrast colors and vivid figures, her composites reflect literal and imaginative migration, global community, and interdependence. Whether her subjects are immigrant day laborers in the U.S., mothers of disappeared women in Juárez, Mexico, or her own abstract self portraits, Rodriguez brings new audiences into the art world by refocusing the cultural lens. Through her work we witness the changing U.S. metropolis and a new diaspora in the arts.

Rodriguez is renowned for her vibrant posters dealing with issues such as war, immigration, globalization, and social movements. She has lectured widely on the use of art in civic engagement and the work of artists who, like herself, are bridging the community and museum, and the local and international. Rodriguez's has worked closely with artists in Mexico, Europe, and Japan, and her works appear in collections at Bellas Artes (Mexico City), The Glasgow Print Studio (Glasgow, Scotland), and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles).

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Ethnic Studies Department, Mills College Art Museum, and Mills College Mujeres Unidas.

Packard Jennings - This Wednesday - CANCELED

2008-10-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

The MFA Lecture series scheduled for Wednesday, October 22 featuring local artist Packard Jennings has been CANCELED.

Ginger Wolfe-Suarez: DON'T STOP WRITING

2008-10-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

Ginger Wolfe-Suarez is an artist whose pluralistic practice is rooted in conceptual art making, writing, and political organizing. In DON'T STOP WRITING she will discuss the relationships between her practice and text, along with the history of nonviolence and writing. Presented in conjunction with Ginger Wolfe-Suarez: AS LONG AS I WILL LIVE YOU WILL LIVE on view at the Mills College Art Museum.

Wednesday, October 8, 7:30pm. Danforth Lecture Hall.

Above image: Ginger Wolfe-Suarez, work camp (detail), 2007-2008. Mixed media installation. Courtesy of the artist.

Uli Sigg & Ai Weiwei This Friday! (9/26/2008)

2008-09-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

The Mills College Art Faculty and Graduate Art Students are pleased to announce round table discussions with Uli Sigg and Ai Weiwei.

Friday September 26, 2008.

Danforth Hall.

See below for times.

Uli Sigg is the world's premiere collector of contemporary Chinese art. A former Swiss ambassador to China, Mr. Sigg's expertise extends well beyond art into the realms of international politics and economics. Mr. Sigg's discussion with Mills College Professor of Painting, Hung Liu, will begin at 2pm.

Ai Weiwei is widely regarded as one of the most famous and infamous artists working in the world today. In addition to exhibiting his work internationally, he is a highly acclaimed curator, critic, activist, and writer. Mr. Weiwei's discussion with Hung Liu will begin at 5pm.

These events are open to the public and all Mills students are encouraged to take part in this rare opportunity. Q&A sessions will follow both discussions.

Checkout his blog and look for the photos of the graduate students at dinner with Ai Weiwei...

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_473f90ad0100b61z.html

Lecture Series Announced for Fall 2008!

2008-08-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

Adrienne Salinger*

Wednesday, October 1
Adrienne Salinger has exhibited her photographs internationally in venues that include the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Barcelona’s Fundacion “la Caixa,” The New Museum, and the National Museum of American Art among others. Salinger has published three books: In My Room: Teenagers in their Bedrooms, Living Solo and Middle Aged Men. Presented by the Herringer Family Foundation Danforth Lecture Hall, Art Building, and 7:30 p.m.

Ginger Wolfe-Suarez

Wednesday, October 8

Packard Jennings*

Wednesday, October 22

Favianna Rodriguez

Wednesday, October 29

Eyebeam, the Eyebeam Road Show*

Saturday, November 15

(times and workshops TBA)

Debra Pincus+

Wednesday, November 12

All lectures are in the Danforth Lecture Hall in the Aron Art Center (next to the Mills Art Museum) and begin at 7:30pm unless otherwise noted.

*The MFA Lecture Series is made possible by the Herringer Family Foundation.

+The Studies in Art History and Criticism Lecture Series is funded by the Jane Green Endowment.

Check back for updates and changes.

Hou Hanru Lecture Wednesday April 9, 7:30 pm Danforth Hall

2008-04-05T13:00:00.000-07:00

Hou Hanru is Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Chair of the Exhibitions and Museum Studies program. A prolific writer and curator, Hou received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he was trained in art history, with additional work in painting, performance, installation, and architectural research. He is a consultant for several cultural institutions internationally including the Global Advisory Committee of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto, Japan. Described as a significant international voice on cultural difference, Hou is the French correspondent for Flash Art International and a regular contributor to several other journals on contemporary art including Frieze, Art Monthly, Third Text, Art and Asia Pacific, Domus, Atlantica, Texte Zur Kunst, and Tema Celeste. Most recently, Hou was appointed Curator of the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, which will take place from September to November 2007. Other recent curatorial projects include the second Guangzhou Triennale where he co-curated Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization; Go Inside, the 3rd Tirana Biennale (Tirana, Albania, 2005); Out of Sight, organized by the De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005); Nuit Blanche 2004 (Paris, 2004); and A L'Ouest Du Sud De L'Est / A L'Est Du Sud De L'Ouest (Villa Arson, Nice, 2004). Hou is one of the first curators and thinkers to examine postmodern issues of nomadic identity, hybridity, globalized mobility, what he calls “in-betweeness,” and artists living in the diaspora.

Charolette Cotton Lecture Thursday May 3, 6:45pm

2008-04-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

Charlotte Cotton is Curator and Department Head of Photographs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Previously, she was Head of Programming at The Photographers' Gallery in London and Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1993to 2004. She has curated many exhibitions of historical and contemporary photography including, 'Imperfect Beauty: the making of contemporary fashion photographs' (2000), 'Out of Japan' (2002), 'Stepping In and Out: contemporary documentary photography' (2003) and 'Guy Bourdin' (2003). Charlotte is the author and editor of publications such as 'Imperfect Beauty' (2000), 'Then Things Went Quiet' (2003), 'Guy Bourdin' (2003) and 'The Photograph as Contemporary Art' (2005).

Marisa Olson Lecture March 12, 7:30pm

2008-03-07T22:56:00.000-08:00

Dave Muller Lecture March 19, 7:30 pm

2008-03-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

Artforum article on Dave Muller: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_9_39/ai_75914283

Yu Hong lecture

2008-02-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

Yu Hong has consistently explored three themes since she graduated from the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1988: the female point of view in all phases of life from childhood to maturity, the relationship of the individual in China to the convulsive transformation of society and finally, the poetry of day-to-day existence despite “most of us leading a life of trivialities…”

Trained in the oil-painting department of the Academy, she has become one of the most accomplished painters of her generation. She uses her technical virtuosity to produce jarring color schemes and inventive compositions that allow us to reconsider the value of the various daily activities. The most recent developments of her work present her astute observations combined with a refined painting sensibility of colorful scenes of daily life. Her pastel portraits and Routine series present paintings of her daughter and herself, respectively, that invest the subject with a persuasive power and universality of the moment depicted. In Britta Erickson’s words, “leavened by Yu Hong’s subtly sardonic wit, her recent works are both profound and utterly enjoyable.”

February 27, 7:30 pm
free to the public
Danforth Hall
Mills College
5000 MacArthur Blvd

Michael Rees lecture

2008-02-06T23:19:00.000-08:00

The Mills MFA Lecture Series is happy to present an evening lecture with Michael Rees.

Michael Rees' art defies category, combining sculpture, animation, performance, video, installation, and computer software programs to express his interest in the body and its connection to mind and spirit. Rees' work references surrealism and other movements in art history, as well as western analytic science and eastern metaphysics. Rees is a self described "pataphysician", a maker of imaginary solutions and an investigator of the truth of contradictions and exceptions. He is professor of Sculpture at the Mason Gross School of Art, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.

Exhibition History: Rees was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and in Michael Rees: Digital Psyche at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Articles have appeared about his work in World Art, Artbyte, Popular Mechanics, Art in America, The New York Times and other publications. In October of 1999 he presented his work in the French Senate in the George Clemenceau Hall at the Palais Du Luxemborg, Paris, France. His work was included in the 2001 Whitney Museum exhibition BitStreams curated by Lawrence Rinder.

The Mills MFA Lecture Series is made possible by the generosity of the Herringer Family Foundation. The Series allows the MFA candidates to invite artists they are interested in to speak at Mills and meet with the students.

February 13, 7:30 pm
free to the public
Danforth Hall
Mills College
5000 MacArthur Blvd

Spring Lecture Series announced

2008-01-28T23:56:00.000-08:00

January 23, 7:30 pm
Curator Marcia Tanner in conversation with Jean Shin and Claudia X. Valdes

February 13, 7:30 pm
Lecture by Michael Rees

February 20, 7:30 pm
Samara Halperin in conversation with Anne Walsh and Gail Wight

February 27, 7:30 pm
Lecture by Yu Hong

March 12, 7:30 pm
Lecture by Marisa Olson

March 19, 7:30 pm
Lecture by Dave Muller

THURSDAY - April 3, 6:45 pm
Lecture by Charlotte Cotton,
curator of Photography from LACMA

April 09, 7:30 pm
Lecture by Hou Hanru

All lectures will take place in Danforth Hall at Mills College, Oakland

Richard Shaw Lecture 11-7 @ 7:30 pm

2007-11-06T00:44:00.000-08:00

Richard Shaw

Public Lecture

Danforth Hall
Mills College, Oakland

11-7 @ 7:30 PM

Laleh Khorramian lecture for download

2007-10-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

DivShare File - Laleh Khorramian-Sequence 1-MPEG-4 300Kbp.mp4

An insightful glimpse into Laleh's process and an exciting preview of her most recent film "inamorare".

Carrie Moyer Lecture this Thursday 10/17 @ 7:30

2007-10-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

Lecture by artist Carrie Moyer
Wednesday, October 17, 7:30pm, Danforth Lecture Hall

New York-based Carrie Moyer balances specific Feminist and other art historical references in her paintings with a seemingly effortless painting style. References to the history of abstract painting are evident, even as she seems to re-claim that history for her own end. Her process combines paint applied with a brush, with large areas of translucent poured pigment. In some paintings she mixes glitter with the pigment—risky business for most artists but Moyer makes it a seamless part of her seductive surfaces. In a review in Artforum of her most recent exhibition, Julia Bryan-Wilson wrote of Moyer’s paintings, “With their emphatic vision of how a politics of contemporary abstraction might operate, these are invigorating, even thrilling works from an artist increasingly confident in the range of her powers.”

Moyer recently contributed an article to U.K.-based Modern Painters entitled “Feminist Art: VIVA,” which addressed the recent series of exhibitions dedicated to Feminist Art in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. For her presentation at the Mills College Art Museum, Moyer will discuss her own work and also the context in which artists work today touching on the relevance of these recent exhibitions.

Moyer’s (Lives and works in New York, NY) is a mixed media painter, whose work has been shown in solo exhibitions, such as The Stone Age, CANADA, New York, NY (2007), Carrie Moyer and Diana Puntar, Samson Projects, Boston, MA (2006), Sister Register, DiverseWorks, Houston, TX (2004), Straight to Hell: 10 Years of Dyke Action Machine!, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2002), along with group exhibitions, Late Liberties, John Connelly Presents, New York, NY (2007), When Artists Say We, Artists Space, New York, NY (2006), BAM Next Wave Visual Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY (2005), About Painting, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, Unjustified, Apexart, New York, NY (2002), and Raw Womyn, Athens Institute of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2002).

Moyer earned her MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY in 2001 and MA from the New York Institute of Technology, New York, NY in 1990. She has received the Alijira Emerge Professional Development Fellowship, Art Matters Fellowship, Elaine de Kooning Memorial Fellowship, Rockefeller New Media Fellowship, and Wattis Artist Residency. She is represented by CANADA, New York, NY. Her work is currently on-view in the group exhibition, Don’t Let the Boys Win, at the Mills College Art Museum through December 9, 2007.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

For more information: 510.430.2164 or www.mills.edu/museum

KINKE KOOI Lecture for your viewing pleasure

2007-09-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

If you were unable to make the lecture please treat yourself to the wonderful musings of Kinke Kooi.

DivShare File - Kinke Kooi-Sequence 1-MPEG-4 300Kbps Stre.mp4

Map to Danforth Hall

2007-09-18T01:59:00.001-07:00

Kinke Kooi Lecture Wednesday 9/19 7:30 PM

2007-09-18T01:27:00.001-07:00

KINKE KOOI SELECTED BIOGRAPHY

Born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, in 1961
Lives in Arnhem, Netherlands

Education

1980–85 Academy for the Visual Arts, Arnhem

One-Person Exhibitions

2006 Feature Inc., New York
“Women Love Small Things,” De Praktijk, Amsterdam

2004 “Pink Web,” De Praktijk, Amsterdam

2002 Feature Inc., New York
“De Ruimte tussen alle Dingen,” De Praktijk, Amsterdam

Selected Group Exhibitions

2007 “Don’t Let the Boys Win,” Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA; curated by Jessica Hough

2006 “Domino,” Air de Paris, Paris
“Twice Drawn” (Part 1), Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
“Quantum Vis II,” RC de Ruimte, IJmuiden, Netherlands
“Anti-makassar,” De Gele Rijder, Arnhem

2005 “The sun rises in the evening.,” Feature Inc., New York
“Drops in the Ocean: Contemporary Images from the Subliminal,” Met Wilde Weten, Project Space, Rotterdam
“Black and White and a Little Bit of Color,” Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem
“Malpractice,” De Praktijk, Amsterdam

2004 “Wim Izaks Prijs: Aaron Van Erp, Iris Kensmil, Kinke Kooi,” Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, Netherlands (catalogue)
“Grey Goo,” Flaca Gallery, London
“Floor of Heaven,” Artis, Den Bosch, Netherlands

2002 “The Space between All Things,” Galerie De Praktijk, Amsterdam
“GtT2,” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

2001 “de Appel van Eva,” Lokaal 01, Breda, Netherlands
“Border Stories: IX International Biennial of Photography,” Fondazione Italiana per la Fotografia,Torino, Italy; curated by Denis Curti (catalogue)
“Not a. Lear,” Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York; Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston; curated by ANP

2000 “Faith: The Impact of Judeo-Christian Religion on Art,” Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; curated by Christian Eckart, Harry Philbrook, and Osvaldo Romberg (catalogue)
“Not a. Lear,” Torch, Amsterdam; Galerie S. & H. De Buck, Ghent, Belgium; Art Process, Paris; curated by ANP
“Grok Terence McKenna Dead,” Feature Inc., New York
“Oogdwalen,” Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen, Netherlands
“Sans Papier,” Consortium, Amsterdam
“City Projects,” Galerie S. & H. De Buck, Ghent, Belgium

Installing the work - Preview

2007-09-18T01:06:00.000-07:00

Entrance to the exhibition

Carrie Moyer

Kinke Kooi

Lara Schnitger

Don't Let the Boys Win opens Sept. 19 at Mills Art Museum

2007-08-30T12:41:00.001-07:00

September 19 - December 9, 2007

Don't Let the Boys Win
Kinke Kooi, Carrie Moyer, and Lara Schnitger

Wednesday, September 19:
Opening Reception: 5:30-7:30 pm, Art Museum
Artist's Lecture by Kinke Kooi: 7:30-8:30 pm, Danforth Hall, Art Building

Curated by Jessica Hough, director, Mills College Art Museum

The Mills College Art Museum presents Don't Let the Boys Win, featuring the dynamic work by nationally and internationally recognized artists Kinke Kooi, Carrie Moyer, and Lara Schnitger.

Don't Let the Boys Win is curated by Jessica Hough. This is Hough's first exhibition in her new position as director of the Mills College Art Museum. She was previously curatorial director at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum where she worked for over nine years.

Each of the artists in Don't Let the Boys Win, through different means, produces work that is imbued with an empowered female perspective. Boldness and humor characterize the work and many of the pieces are unapologetically erotic. Ornament and texture is integral to each of the artists' practices, and a hippie-inspired aesthetic is also at work. The title of the exhibition, borrowed from a sculpture of the same name by Schnitger, highlights the provocative playfulness of the work in this exhibition.

In her drawings on paper and on photographs, artist Kinke Kooi, based in Arnhem, Netherlands, imbues such things as human eyes, a hand, or an ordinary apartment building with a talisman-like quality. Kooi fills the space around the objects in her compositions with a dense swirling line pattern that gives the air a pillow-like effect. It is as if each object is cushioned by its surrounding, and at the same time is setting into motion the atmosphere around it.

Baba Jaga, 2007, Acrylic paint on photograph, 26 x 20 inches, Courtesy Feature Inc., New York

New York-based Carrie Moyer balances specific Feminist and other art historical references in her paintings with a seemingly effortless painting style. References to the history of abstract painting are evident, even as she seems to re-claim that history for her own end. Her process combines paint applied with a brush, with large areas of translucent poured pigment. In some paintings she mixes glitter with the pigment-risky business for most artists but Moyer makes it a seamless part of her seductive surfaces.

The Stone Age, 2006, Acrylic, glitter on canvas, 60 x 84 inches, Collection of Stephen Hilton, New York

Los Angeles-based Lara Schnitger's sculptures have an animated physical presence that makes it seem as if they might begin to move around the gallery. Each work is composed of a sewn fabric "skin" stretched over a wooden armature. The wooden structures are made from a series of joined long, narrow pieces, which point out into space and threaten to puncture the fabric into which they push. The literal tension on the fabric adds to the already emotional quality of the works.

The Only Bush I Trust is My Own, 100 x 92 x 72 inches, Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, New York

Lecture Series Schedule Announced for Fall 2007!

2007-08-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

Kinke Kooi Lecture
scheduled September 19, 2007 from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Laleh Khorramian lecture 3:30
scheduled September 23, 2007 from 3:30 PM to ?

Carrie Moyer Lecture
scheduled October 17, 2007 from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Hank Willis Thomas Lecture 7:30pm
scheduled October 24, 2007 from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Richard Shaw Lecture
scheduled November 7, 2007 from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Deborah Oropallo Lecture
scheduled November 14, 2007 from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Welcome!

2007-08-30T12:23:00.001-07:00

Hello!

Welcome to the blog for the Mills MFA lecture series. Here you will find information about the artists in our series as well as unique content to support your experience and knowledge of the Lecture Series and the school's MFA program.

The MFA Lecture Series is made possible by the incredible support of the Herringer Family Foundation without whom we would just be talking to ourselves and not with a world of artists from around the globe.

We hope you will enjoy the lectures we've lined up.
Many thanks!
Michael Hall