SFMOMA’s David Senior Lectures on Performing Publications at PNCA

SFMOMA’s David Senior Lectures on Performing Publications at PNCA

One of two upcoming programs for the exhibition Projects for the Page

Portland, OR—November 9, 2017—The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is pleased to present Performing Publications, a lecture by David Senior, Chief of Library and Archives at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). This lecture, on Wednesday, November 15 at 6:30pm, is presented in conjunction with, Projects for the Page, an expansive exhibition of publications made by artists that is on view through January 12, 2017 at PNCA. The exhibition broadly considers the subversive potential of the publication as an alternative exhibition space to include questions around and implications of publications' potential to circulate works of art outside of traditional channels

Senior will talk about artists’ publications and contemporary art history, introducing a selection of historical artists’ books, magazines and ephemera that reflect experiments with performance and the various ways that these published works were used to communicate and distribute these new art practices. The examples will come from some recent exhibitions that Senior has curated and the library collections where he has worked.

In addition, on Saturday, December 9 at 11am, art historian Emily Henderson, co-curator of Projects for the Page, will deliver a talk entitled Intimacy: in-between the form. Her talk concerns researches undertaken on intimacy in art explored through the lens of poetics, metaphysics, and writing-based practices. She will discuss the opening in art and art-working via the extension of the form i.e. the object, the sculpture, the individual(s) in process and in communion. The talk stems from her thesis researches at University of Amsterdam and her work in the Michael Gibbs archive.

About Projects for the Page The more than 50 works by artists published in the past 50 years that are included in Projects for the Page imagine the scope of possible works that might be envisioned as living in books, zines, and folios. Collectively, the works also demonstrate the scope of disciplines contemporary artists fold into their practices, with conceptual projects and works of philosophy, literature, translation, anthropology, comics, and poetry.

Projects for the Page comprises publications by artists including Sturtevant, Dorothy Iannone, Irena Haiduk, Alice Aycock, Hannah Black, Susan Cianciolo, Trisha Donnelly, Shannon Ebner, Mary Beth Edelson, Madeline Gins, Adrian Piper, Sturtevant, and Evelyn Taocheng Wang.

Projects for the Page is organized by art historian and curator, Emily Henderson, Assistant Director of the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture, Ashley Gibson Graeter, and artist and poet, Lisa Radon. The Center gratefully acknowledges loans to the exhibition made by the Reed College Library, Air de Paris, Container Corps, PNCA’s Albert Solheim Library, and private collectors.

About David Senior David Senior is the Head of Library and Archives at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Formerly he was the Senior Bibliographer at the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York City. At MoMA, he was responsible for developing the Library’s collection, especially its esteemed artists’ books collection. Senior also curated many exhibitions of MoMA Library materials, including Back in Time with Time-Based Works: Artists’ Books at Franklin Furnace, 1976–1980 (2016), THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY (2016), Ray Johnson Designs (2014), Please Come to the Show (2013), Millennium Magazines (2012), Access to Tools: Publications from the Whole Earth Catalog, 1968–74 (2011). In 2016-2017, he co-curated Thoughts Isolated: The Foksal Gallery Archives 1966–2016, at CUNY Graduate Center in NYC and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. For the last nine years, he has organized a program of events for Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair and more recently, at the Los Angeles Art Book Fair. This program is called the Classroom and has involved over 300 talks, performances and workshops by contemporary artists, designers, writers and publishers. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Dot Dot Dot, Bulletins of the Serving Library, ART PAPERS, and C Magazine. Please Come to the Show, a book documenting his exhibition of artists’ invitations and show flyers from the MoMA Library, was published by Occasional Papers in 2014. He serves on the advisory committees of Printed Matter and Art Resources Transfer and the board of directors of Primary Information and Yale Union.

About Emily Henderson Emily Henderson is an art historian and researcher from Portland, Oregon USA. She is the managing editor for the annual journal EIGHTS and most recently has been conducting researches in the archive of the late artist Michael Gibbs for which she contributed to the recent publication on Gibbs’ work, Michael Gibbs: All or nothing and other pages. Henderson holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sculpture and Art History from Portland State University and is currently finishing her Master’s in Art History from the University of Amsterdam. Prior to her graduate work, she was a researcher for Pacific Northwest College of Art and program coordinator for c3:initiative. She is currently based in Portland and Amsterdam. 

About the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture is a platform for cultural production including exhibition, lecture, performance, and publication. Housed within Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), the Center throws open its doors to the greater public to foster conversation and community.

About Pacific Northwest College of Art Pacific Northwest College of Art empowers artists and designers to reimagine what art and design can do in the world. Founded in 1909 as the Museum Art School in Portland, Oregon, PNCA offers ten art and design Bachelor of Fine Art programs, six graduate programs including Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts programs within the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies, a Post-Baccalaureate program, and Continuing Education courses for artists and designers of all ages.