These sessions are now passed.
For the 2021-22 year, we are proud to bring back the Arts Masterclass series, A Tour of the World in 6 Artworks. This year, we will be hearing directly from artists, gallerists and performers themselves, about their work and philosophies!
Register for one or all of the sessions at https://bit.ly/3IkRRzG. All sessions are open to the Baruch community free of charge.
October 14, 2021: Prof. John Maciuika, “How Do You Gain Independence When You Have Lost Your Freedom?: The Case of Architecture at Lazdynai, Lithuania, 1962-1974.”
This lecture is based on material from his recent book, Lithuanian Architects Assess the Soviet Era: The 1992 Oral History Tapes (Vilnius: LAPAS Press, 2020).
November 4, 2021, Jonathan Goodman Levitt, “Filming Beliefs: Formation of the Self in Longitudinal Documentary”
Emmy-nominated filmmaker Jonathan Goodman Levitt will offer insights into his artistic practice of documentary filmmaking from his 20-year career. Jonathan’s work personalizes social issues and motivates social change by charting people’s lives as they unfold on-screen.
December 2, 2021, Angela Sebastian, “A Filipina Dance Artist’s Quest for Creativity”
Born and raised in the Philippines, Angela Sebastian is excited to share and talk about her choreographies as a dance artist. Focusing on her performance piece Saksi (witness), Angela will discuss her choreographic process by exploring the influences and nuances in the movement vocabulary of a migrating Filipino body, emphasizing memories, identity, and questions towards authentic Filipino cultural practices.
February 3, 2022, Dana Liljegren, “Viyé Diba: Art, ecology, and global commerce in Dakar, Senegal”
This presentation examines the recent mixed-media art of Viyé Diba (b. 1954) in relation to issues of urban development, commerce, and the environment. As an internationally acclaimed artist, professor, and scholar of urban geography, Diba is a key figure within the discourse of contemporary African art.
March 3, 2022, Sundaram Tagore, “Louis Kahn’s Tiger City”
In a documentary film, Sundaram examines how Kahn, an Estonian-born American architect, built a daringly modern and monumental housing complex in the culturally rich but economically shattered country of Bangladesh.
April 7, 2022, Athena LaTocha, “Themes in Native American Art: Athena LaTocha on her art and practice”
Athena LaTocha is a New York-based artist whose work investigates the anthropogenic impact (human-induced forces) upon the natural world. Born in Alaska and of the Lakota and Ojibwe nations, LaTocha maintains deep bonds with indigenous philosophies of the land, reflected in site-responsive mixed-media works on paper that evoke natural processes through expansive scale and an expressive approach to mark making and creating form. She is inspired as much by her upbringing in the Alaskan wilderness as by the Earthworks movement of the 1960-70s, and by the possibilities articulated by artists associated with this movement, of creating with and alongside the earth. Although her works are largely wall-based, she often incorporates sculptural elements, lead casts of fallen tree limbs and rocks, the latter bearing traces of glacial ice movement in our region. While her works act to elicit an awe of nature’s profound qualities, they also speak to environmental degradation and to historic and cultural narratives that reflect ingrained memories of trauma, especially the experiences of indigenous people in the Americas.