Curatorial Minds Lab: Virtual Lecture with Guest Curator Sofía Casarin, Co-founder of Ruta del Castor, Mexico City

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Curatorial Minds Lab: Virtual Lecture with Guest Curator Sofía Casarin, Co-founder of Ruta del Castor, Mexico City

Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 5:30 pmCML logo

Virtual lecture; advance registration required.

Sofia Casarin is a Mexico-based curator and art historian whose work focuses on the relationship between the arts and politics and on the role of artists as civic agents. She is the co-founder and curator of Ruta del Castor in Mexico City, a nonprofit organization working with artists and supporting meaningful, socially engaged art initiatives through residency programs, research projects and commissions in public spaces. She has served as an editor and writer for art and literature magazine diSONARE, as a juror for numerous art competitions and as a speaker and panelist for conferences on art and community. She holds a B.A. in art history and international relations from Florida International University and an M.A. in art and politics from Goldsmiths, University of London. The lecture is presented as part of the Curatorial Minds Lab, a new initiative of the Hamon Arts Library’s Hawn Gallery and the Pollock Gallery at SMU that gives five Fellows – made up of alumni and current students – an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the historical development of curatorial practices and study contemporary art display theory and practice. To register to attend the virtual lecture, please visit:  https://smu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIlcOyqqzwsE9cIyBwslaoGzyHKwe_3BHf4.

For more information, visit https://pollockgallery.art/Curatorial-Minds-Lab or email Pollock Gallery Assistant Curator Everton Melo at emelo@smu.edu.

Curatorial Minds Lab – spring 2021 fellows & upcoming events

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Please join us in welcoming the five fellows for the spring 2021 Curatorial Minds Lab cohort, hosted by the Hawn Gallery in the Hamon Arts Library, SMU.  

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Aidan Ellis (she/her) is a second-year student from Austin, TX pursuing majors in Film & Media Studies and English with minors in Human Rights and Art History. She applies her diverse academic interests to examine how the ideation, production, curation, and reception of cultural texts respond and relate to Human Rights topics and issues. She is particularly fascinated by texts as mechanisms for empathy, and she hopes to produce and curate texts in ways that utilize this mechanism to achieve meaningful, cross-cultural understanding.

Elise Huff is a recent graduate from Southern Methodist University. During her time as an undergraduate, she was a recipient of SMU’s Engaged Learning Fellowship, conducting independent research on the intersection of nonverbal and verbal modes of communication and its impact on 1st and 2nd generation Germans and Mexicans in the United States. Recently, she interned for the Dallas Art Fair, as well as Site 131, a contemporary art gallery. She currently is enrolled in Harvard’s CopyrightX program, examining topics related to art law, as well as intellectual and cultural property. Elise plans to pursue a master’s degree in art history this upcoming fall, and her primary research interests include the use of legal documents in Conceptual art and the role of authorship in collaborative or performance-based works.

Adrienne Lichliter-Hines is a printmaking and paper artist and educator working in Dallas, Texas. She received her MFA from Clemson University in 2014 and has a Bachelors of Arts in art history and painting from Southern Methodist University. Her work has been shown throughout Texas and the United States as well as abroad in China, Japan, Egypt, Italy, and the UK. She has been an invited resident artist at The Kala Art Institute in Berkeley CA, 100 West in Corsicana TX, Artscape in Toronto, Canada, and Zygote Press in Cleveland OH. She is currently the Marketing and Programs Manager of The Cedars Union, a nonprofit art incubator in Dallas, TX, and the Advisory Board President of Corsicana Artists and Writers Residency. Adrienne maintains a modest studio practice exploring photographic textures and non-objective mark-making through lithography in an effort to challenge the hierarchy of commodified attention.

Gabriela Paiva de Toledo is a second-year Ph.D. student in the RASC/a: Rhetorics of Art, Space, and Culture at Southern Methodist University. She received her B.A. in History with an Art History minor from the University of Campinas (Brazil) in 2015 and her M.A. in Art History from the same institution in 2017. Currently, her interests lie in Contemporary Brazilian art and photography.

Sophia Salinas is a senior SMU undergraduate student working towards a BA of Art History and a BBA in General Business. She has focused her studies on modern and contemporary art with attention to feminist theories of agency, embodiment, and technology, and is currently completing a thesis on Cyberfeminist Art Practices. She is also the current AAMD Intern in Museum Education at the Meadows Museum.ABOUT

Curatorial Minds Lab is a bimonthly gathering (online/on-campus) of SMU alumni and current students interested in deepening their understanding of the historical development of curatorial practices and the study of contemporary art display theory/practice including exhibition typologies and curatorial models. In the framework of this program, history, theory, contextualization, organization, and execution of curatorial projects will be discussed, evaluated, and critiqued.

The Curatorial Minds Lab is a program designed by SMU Pollock Gallery Director, Sofia Bastidas Vivar in collaboration with Assistant Director of the Hamon Arts Library and Hawn Gallery curator, Beverly Mitchell. The space for this theorization and practice will be in the Hawn Gallery at the Hamon Arts Library, accompanied by materials and texts.

CML fellows will also moderate a series of online public talks given by curators established or emerging in their careers. Included in these series are Taylor Renee Aldridge, Sofia Casarín, Yina Jiménez Suriel, and May Makki. Dates for this series are March 17, April 7, April 28 and September 22 at 5:30 pm.

For more information please contact: abastidas@smu.edu

Get Zen @ Hamon: Listen to something relaxing on Naxos

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During this stressful time, Hamon Arts Library wants to help you maintain your Zen!

A good way to relax is to listen to soothing sounds like that of nature or classical music, which can be found in the Naxos Music Library.

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Access the Naxos Music Library with your SMU ID by completing a title search of the databases through the Hamon home page. As an authorized SMU library user, you may even create your own relaxing playlist.

It is almost like those other streaming music apps but without the commercials, and it’s free to students, faculty and staff at SMU!

 

Choose from titles like:

Mother Nature – Guided Relaxation

The Ultimate Relaxation Album

Blue Classics

Classical Yoga

Cello For Relaxation

 

For additional information on how to use The Naxos Music Library just AskUs.

Blog post: LaGail Davis, General Operations Manager and zen master, Hamon Arts Library, SMU

The best sound quality: African American musicians on CD in Hamon

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Hamon CDsDid you know the Hamon Arts Library provides access to millions of music recording tracks? The Library carries multiple formats, but this post will highlight several of its recordings by African-American musicians, singers, and composers available in compact disc. But first, why is Hamon continuing to collect CDs when streaming is the preferred format for most music listeners?

The Hamon Library subscribes to multiple different streaming databases, which provide access to millions of tracks of music. However, the library also retains a collection of over 17,200 compact discs. Contrary to perceived opinion, compact discs are not dead! In 2002, CDs accounted for ninety-five percent of the market share. Now they account for less than seven percent of music recording revenues. Yet, producers continue to make them, and Hamon continues to buy and add them to the music collection for a few good reasons.

Continue reading “The best sound quality: African American musicians on CD in Hamon”

Extended date to December 18 for Michael Corris: Incidents on a Page, Dallas-Venice Dreamscapes

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Michael Corris, Retour à la Normale

Michael Corris
Incidents on a Page, Dallas-Venice Dreamscapes, 1976-2020
Extended to December 18
Hawn Gallery, Hamon Arts Library

The Hawn Gallery is pleased to extend this exhibition for one more week before the campus closure for the winter break on Monday, December 21.

SMU community hours (SMU I.D. required): 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Mon.-Thurs; 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Fri.; 12-5 p.m. Sat.; 2-9 p.m. Sun. Following Thanksgiving, Hamon’s hours change to Mon. – Fri. 8 am – 5 pm, closed weekends.

Public hours 12-5 p.m. After Thanksgiving by appointment during the weekdays. For appointments, please contact hawngallery@smu.edu.

SMU and all campus libraries require masks and six feet social distancing. Three people in the gallery at one time.

Continue reading “Extended date to December 18 for Michael Corris: Incidents on a Page, Dallas-Venice Dreamscapes”

New Contactless Delivery Service Option at Hamon – Locker Pick Up!

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new lockers for request pick-upIn addition to the Curbside Pick Up service begun by SMU Libraries this summer, the Hamon Arts Library now offers a second way for contactless delivery of materials – Locker Pick Up. Once you request materials in Hamon’s collection through the SMU Libraries catalog, the notification you receive gives you instructions for either pick-up option.

For the locker Pick Up, you will be sent the number of the locker and your unique combination. The lockers are located at the Hillcrest entrance to the Hamon Arts Library in the Owen Arts Center. Access to the lockers is available until 9 pm seven days a week, and begins 7:30am Monday – Friday; 8:00am, Saturday; 9:00am on Sunday. Materials will be held for 5 days. Continue reading “New Contactless Delivery Service Option at Hamon – Locker Pick Up!”

Hawn Gallery presents Michael Corris: Incidents on a Page, Dallas-Venice Dreamscapes, 1976-2020

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Michael Corris, Incident on a Page 2
Michael Corris, Incident on a Page 2

Michael Corris
Incidents on a Page, Dallas-Venice Dreamscapes, 1976-2020
September 21 – December 11, 2020
Hawn Gallery, Hamon Arts Library

The Hawn Gallery is pleased to announce Incidents on a Page: Dallas-Venice Dreamscapes, 1976-2020. Michael Corris, SMU Professor Emeritus of Art, has been active as an artist since the early 1970s, first as a member of the collective Art & Language in New York, and later, as a founding editor of the publications The Fox and Red Herring. Subsequently, he began teaching art criticism and art history in England, and eventually came to Dallas as Chair of the Division of Art at SMU in 2009. His expansive practice is not easily distilled into distinct categories or media, but rather maintains a sustained engagement with and critical analysis of the conditions of production and dissemination of art. Over the course of his career Corris’s work has taken many forms, including but not limited to essayistic writing, graphic design, curation, public intervention, community activism and organization, and education, responding to the needs of a given circumstance or lived situation.   Continue reading “Hawn Gallery presents Michael Corris: Incidents on a Page, Dallas-Venice Dreamscapes, 1976-2020”

Allyson Packer: Sounding – now open until September 13th

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visitors in front of Packer exhibitAs the Hamon Arts Library opens up for the fall 2020 semester, the Hawn Gallery is very pleased to announce that the spring exhibition, Allyson Packer: Sounding, is also open for viewing until September 13. This exhibition, about which more can be read below, opened on February 7. Due to the campus closing in March, this exhibition did not continue its full run to March 29. Members of the SMU community holding an active ID to come into any of the SMU Libraries are now welcome to experience this exhibition. As throughout the University, staff at Hamon have also taken measures to create a safe and healthy environment in the building. All SMU visitors must wear a mask, remain six feet apart, and hand sanitizer is on site as well. Gallery occupancy is limited to three people at a time.

A virtual walkthrough of the exhibition can also be viewed on Glasstire from its April posting.

To read more about this exhibition, please see an Interview with artist, Allyson Packer, on Sounding at the Hawn Gallery, Hamon.

Fall 2020 exhibition hours: Monday, Aug. 24 – Friday, Aug. 28 – 8 am – 6 pm; closed Saturday, Aug. 29.  Beginning Sunday, Aug. 30 – 2 – 9 pm on Sundays; Monday – Thursday, 8 am – 9 pm; Friday, 8 am – 6 pm; and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm until September 13.

♦♦♦

Continue reading “Allyson Packer: Sounding – now open until September 13th”

Research in the archives: Texas Made Modern

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Spruce in Big Bend, c. 1935Since it opened in 1961, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art has always had a commitment to exploring the breadth and complexity of American creativity through its collections and exhibitions. Evaluating Texas art’s importance in relation to the museum’s collection and the larger canon of American art has been one of my focuses since 2013. Though I started to work on a potential exhibition on Texas artist Everett Spruce (1908–2002) that year, the museum world’s ever-changing nature redirected my attention to other urgent and pressing projects. Although it may not seem the case, scheduling exhibitions is like solving a Rubik’s cube—there are millions of combinations and only one solution. Changes to the permanent collection, timing and availability of an exhibition according to a lending museum’s guidelines, and the complexity of each installation (are there videos or special cabinetry needed? etc.) are only some of the factors affecting an exhibition’s timing. In 2019, all the colors aligned on each side of a Rubik’s cube for a summer 2020 exhibition of Spruce’s work. I had a shorter period than usual to curate the exhibition and write the catalogue for Texas Made Modern: The Art of Everett Spruce (August 18–November 1, 2020). Because many of Spruce’s works were available to see regionally in private collections, I thought my task would be much easier than I imagined. After meeting with the artist’s daughter, Alice Spruce Meriwether, who graciously shared the inventory she compiled of her father’s artwork, I discovered that Spruce had painted over 800 artworks during his lifetime, many of which are either lost or in unknown locations. Continue reading “Research in the archives: Texas Made Modern”