News from the Princeton University Art Museum

Artist Talk Vik Muniz Thursday, November 12, 5:30 p.m. (EST)

Photographer Vik Muniz is best known for his re-creations of seminal artworks using everyday materials, including images torn from magazines, pieces of junk, and powdered pigments. Muniz will discuss his career, creative process, and latest production in the face of the pandemic. His ongoing series Postcards from Nowhere was recently published in a two-volume set by Aperture. The artist will be introduced by Museum Director James Steward. Details and free registration here.

Art Making Drawing from the Collections: Capturing Motion Thursday, November 12, 8 p.m. (EST) The Art Museum is partnering with the Arts Council of Princeton to offer free weekly art-making classes taught over Zoom, so participants can join live from home. A variety of media and techniques will be explored using readily available materials. Each lesson features works from the Museum’s collections.   This week’s class is inspired by Edgar Degas’s Dancers. Degas painted, drew, and sculpted ballerinas frequently, capturing their energy and movement. He experimented with unusual viewpoints and often cut figures off at the edge of the canvas, helping to create the impression of dancers in motion. In this class we will explore techniques for depicting movement. Details and free registration here.     Faculty Panel Displaced, Erased, Unseen: Representations of Latinx Bodies in Contemporary Art Friday, November 13, 2 p.m. (EST)   Join us for a live webinar roundtable with Princeton scholars from across disciplines as they consider strategies used by Latinx artists to combat the social and political forces that obscure the lived experiences of marginalized communities. The panelists will engage with recent scholarship and discuss works by Latin American artists that are now in the Museum’s collections. Panelists include Javier Guerrero, Department of Spanish and Portuguese and director of Undergraduate Studies; Susana Draper, Comparative Literature; and Christina León, English. Moderated by Beth Gollnick, curatorial associate in Photography and Modern and Contemporary Art. Details and free registration here.   Conversation Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch Wednesday, November 18, 6 p.m. (EST)   In her new book, Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch, renowned art historian Svetlana Alpers explores how Walker Evans made his distinctive photographs. Delving into a lavish selection of Evans’s work, she uncovers rich parallels between the photographer's creative approach and those of numerous literary and cultural figures. Alpers is joined by Katherine Bussard, the Art Museum’s Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography. Presented in partnership with Labyrinth Books. Details here and free registration here.   Save the Date Picturing Pandemics: From the Distant Past to the Recent Present Friday, November 20, 2 p.m. (EST)   Throughout history and across cultures, art has played a fundamental role in addressing infectious diseases and their effects on individuals and society. The Museum’s exhibition States of Health: Visualizing Illness and Healing examined eighty works of globe-spanning art that collectively illuminate the role art plays in shaping our perceptions and experiences of illness and healing. Princeton Alumni Weekly explores the exhibition in its recent cover story.   Join us on Friday, November 20, for a live online program in which Bryan Just, Peter Jay Sharp, Class of 1952, Curator and Lecturer in the Art of the Ancient Americas; Laura Giles, Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, Curator of Prints and Drawings; Veronica White, Curator of Academic Programs; and Robbie LeDesma, a Princeton graduate student in Molecular Biology, discuss objects in the Museum’s collections related to pandemics, ranging from the ancient Americas to contemporary times. Details and free registration here.   Student Volunteers Applications Now Open   Applications for the Art Museum’s next group of Student Advisory Board members are due November 22. Your participation helps ensure that student voices are always a part of the Museum conversation. Details here. Image credits    Vik Muniz; courtesy of the artist Edgar Degas, Dancers, ca. 1899. Princeton University Art Museum. Bequest of Henry K. Dick, Class of 1909 Teresa Margolles, Scarlett, Pista de Baile del Club “La Cruda” (Scarlett, dance floor from the club “La Cruda”), 2016. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of James Cohan, New York Maya, Late Classic, Chak Chel (Great Rainbow), A.D. 600–800. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of J. Lionberger Davis, Class of 1990