Summer symposium

“What Can Exhibitions Do?”

San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)
800 Chestnut Street, Lecture Hall
San Francisco, CA 94133T
+415 749 4534

June 19–20, 2015

Free and open to all.

Looking back in time for experimental precedents and forward to technological innovations, the symposium engages exhibitions of the past, present, and future to challenge conventional modes of contemporary art display. How do exhibitions—and display as a categorical mode—shape our understanding of contemporary art and artists? Two provocative keynote lectures will be followed by an afternoon of panels and breakout discussion groups.

Schedule
Friday, June 19
6:30pm
Keynote one: “What Can an Exhibition Do (within the Institutional Context)?”
Larry Rinder, Director, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive

Saturday, June 20
9am–6pm
Keynote two: “What Can an Exhibition Do (outside of the Institutional Context)?”
Jen Delos Reyes, Director/Founder, Open Engagement

5pm
Reception, Diego Rivera Gallery
Reception features artist talk with Alejandro Almanza Pereda on his in-process intervention with SFAI’s Diego Rivera fresco.

Free and open to all.

Keynote speakers
Lawrence Rinder is Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. He returned to the University of California from California College of the Arts, where he was Dean. Previously, he was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he organized exhibitions including The American Effect, 2002 Biennial, and Tim Hawkinson. Rinder was also Founding Director of CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco. His many exhibitions include Barry McGee, 2012, curated with Dena Beard; Knowledge of Higher Worlds: Rudolf Steiner’s Blackboard Drawings, 1997; Louise Bourgeois: Drawings, 1996; and Searchlight: Consciousness at the Millennium, 2000.

Jen Delos Reyes is a creative laborer, educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer. Her practice is as much about working with institutions as it is about creating and supporting sustainable, artist-run culture. Delos Reyes worked within Portland State University from 2008–2014 to create the first flexible-residency Art and Social Practice MFA program in the U.S., devising a curriculum focused on place, engagement, and dialogue. Delos Reyes is currently working on I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing about in My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning—a book exploring the artist’s impetus toward art and everyday life.

Participants
Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Artist-In-Residence
Kevin Consey, Independent Nonprofit Management/Art Museum Consultant
Alla Efimova, Principal, KunstWorks
David Kasprzak, Artist, Will Brown
Christina Linden, Associate Curator of Painting & Sculpture, Oakland Museum of California
Cléa Laurent Massiani, Curator/Partner/Director, Bass and Reiner Gallery
Marina McDougall, Director, Center for Art & Inquiry, Exploratorium
Susan Miller, Curator
Ted Purves, Chair and Associate Professor of Fine Arts, California College of the Arts
Frank Smigiel, Associate Curator, Performance and Film, SFMOMA
Margaret Tedesco, Director, [2nd floor projects], San Francisco
 
Additional participants to be announced.