Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitors
Douglas Crimp
"Before Pictures"
Tuesday, February 9, 2016, 7:30 p.m.
Vollum lecture hall
Free and open to the public.
Image courtesy of the Dorothea Tuch.
A central figure in the field of art history and cultural and queer studies, Douglas Crimp will read from his upcoming memoir, Before Pictures, an autobiographical reflection on art, theory, and the queer subcultures of New York in the 60s and 70s. Reading from the chapter "Hotel des Artistes," Crimp will revisit the first catalogue essay he wrote—for an exhibition devoted to American minimal painting—and weave in stories of his first summer on Fire Island and various early excursions to Europe.
Crimp is Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester and the author of On the Museum's Ruins (1993), Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (2002), and "Our Kind of Movie": The Films of Andy Warhol (2012). He was guest curator of Pictures at Artists Space, in New York, in 1977 and an editor of October magazine from 1977 to 1990. He co-organized Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices 1970s to the Present for the Reina Sofía in Madrid, and he was on the curatorial team for the current iteration of MoMA PS1's quinquennial Greater New York.