From Living Room to Mirrored Room and Beyond: Four Lectures on Art and the Home

By Cathleen Chaffee, Chief Curator, Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Thursdays, April 16, April 23, April 30, and May 7, 2020, 12 pm EST

This spring, the Albright-Knox is presenting a member-exclusive online series of conversations with Chief Curator Cathleen Chaffee.

At a moment when many of us are spending an unprecedented amount of time at home, uncover the way art has been lived with in domestic spaces, how museums have evolved from such private spaces and collections, and how modern artists have provocatively evoked the home or re-created domestic space as part of their work. Each hour-long lecture will be broadcast live, and you will have the opportunity to submit questions for discussion at the end.

Registration

This series is FREE for Albright-Knox members. Register online using the links below. Please register for each of the four lectures individually if you would like to attend the entire series. You will receive an email reminder the day of the lecture with directions for joining the webinar and submitting questions. Please contact membership@albrightknox.org with any questions or for assistance.

Lectures

Lecture 1: Thursday, April 16, 2020, 12 pm EST
Personal to Public, Decorative to Edifying: The Fall and Rise of Function

This lecture surveys the collecting and display of art within the domestic sphere from the Ancient world to the aristocratic realm of the 19th century. We will look at a wide range of examples, from painted décor and cabinets of curiosity to the aristocratic collections that were key foundations of the modern museum. Art’s historic (and historically complicated) interconnection with the home forms the central topic of this first lecture. Register Online

Lecture 2: Thursday, April 23, 2020, 12 pm EST
Living Rooms that Changed the World, Part 1

This lecture focuses on a few key examples of living rooms that helped introduce artists and collectors who supported their work in the modern era. This study of the importance of art's circulation in domestic life will include a discussion of several important modern salons, and the collectors, including Gertrude Stein and Katherine Dreier, around which they orbited. Register Online

Lecture 3: Thursday, April 30, 2020, 12 pm EST
Living Rooms that Changed the World, Part 2

This lecture continues with the previous talk’s discussion of living rooms that helped introduce artists and collectors who supported their work in the modern era. This lecture presents further modern salons, including those of Hilla Rebay and Dorothy and Herb Vogel. Register Online

Lecture 4: Thursday, May 7, 2020, 12 pm EST
A Domestic Destiny?

The final lecture focuses on the fraught relationship between art and domestic space in the modern and contemporary era and how artists and curators have creatively sought to problematize or even repair the breach—with mixed results. This lecture features an extensive discussion of contemporary artists (including Lucas Samaras, Louise Lawler, Gregor Schneider, Haim Steinbach, John Armleder, and Marcel Broodthaers) who have chosen to take art’s display and the home as topics for their art. Register Online

Visitors in Lucas Samaras's Mirrored Room, 1966, on December 15, 1966. Image courtesy of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Digital Assets Collection and Archives, Buffalo, New York. 

With thanks to the Garret Club, Buffalo, where a version of these lectures was delivered in 2016.