CCCD presents the second annual Windgate Research and Collections Curator Lecture, titled “Follow the Money: Understanding Art Production Today”, with Glenn Adamson and Julia Bryan-Wilson.

In their new book, Art in the Making: Artists and their Materials from the Studio to Crowdsourcing, Julia Bryan-Wilson and Glenn Adamson make a series of provocative arguments about contemporary art practice. Noting the longstanding aversion of artists and their representatives to transparent discussion of production, they argue for the importance of process in critical interpretation.

In this talk, they highlight one of the most important, yet least discussed aspects in the making of contemporary art: its economic footprint. They examine issues such as the use of luxury materials, dependence on fabricators, and the significance of scale. Among the artists under discussion are Susan Collis, Urs Fischer, Sylvie Fleury, Damian Hirst, Jeff Koons, Jill Magid, Ai Weiwei, and Rachel Whiteread.

About the authors:

Glenn Adamson is a curator and theorist who works across the fields of design, craft and contemporary art. He was until March 2016 the Director of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York. He has previously been Head of Research at the V&A, and Curator at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee. His publications include Art in the Making (2016, co-authored with Julia Bryan Wilson); Invention of Craft (2013); Postmodernism: Style and Subversion (2011); The Craft Reader (2010); and Thinking Through Craft (2007).

Julia Bryan-Wilson is associate professor of contemporary art at the University of California, Berkeley and a frequent contributor to Artforum. She is the author Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (2009), and, with Glenn Adamson, Art in the Making: Artists and their Materials from the Studio to Crowdsourcing (2016). Her book Fray: Art and Textile Politics will be published in 2017 by the University of Chicago Press.

About the book:

Art in the Making: Artists and their Materials from the Studio to Crowdsourcing (Thames and Hudson, 2016)

In this wide-ranging exploration of methods and media in art since the 1950s Glenn Adamson and Julia Bryan-Wilson take the reader behind the scenes of the studio, the factory, and other sites where art is created. They show how the materials and processes used by artists are vital to considerations of authorship, and to understanding the economic and social contexts from which art emerges.

About the Windgate Research and Collections Curator:

The Windgate Research and Collections Curator is a jointly appointed position demonstrating a significant partnership between CCCD, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), and the Bard Graduate Center (BGC) in New York City. This position serves to establish a new hub for expanded field of craft research in the United States. Funded by the Windgate Charitable Foundation, the post is intended to advance scholarly research and critical discourse in the fields of craft and design through research, exhibitions, publications, and public programming.

Elissa Auther was appointed Windgate Research and Collections Curator in 2015, at MAD, BGC, and CCCD. At MAD she has recently launched an initiative to reactivate the museum’s permanent collection with a series of creative exhibitions that connect the history of craft to contemporary artistic practice today. At BGC, she teaches graduate seminars in contemporary art and the history of craft. In addition to serving on CCCD’s Program Advisory Council, Auther organizes an annual lecture series in Asheville, NC.

Follow the Money: Understanding Art Production Today || Guest Lecture by Glenn Adamson and Julia Bryan-Wilson, Oct. 27, 2016 6:30 p.m. at The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design