Global Speed Series Archive

Global Speed is a community lecture series featuring international figures in the art world, to entertain and inform on global art topics.

 

Japan 2023

October 5, 6:30 – 7:30 PM

Speaker: Janice Katz
Topic: Ukiyo-e and the Windy City:  Japanese Prints at the Art Institute of Chicago

The early and intense commitment of Chicagoan Clarence Buckingham (1854-1913) to the Art Institute formed the museum’s well known Japanese print collection.  From the 1890’s, Buckingham, assisted by advisors such as curator Frederick W. Gookin and architect Frank Lloyd Wright, assembled a collection of prints of exceptional range and quality.  Today more than ever, there is a responsibility to display and care for this collection as well as describe its history and formation for a global audience.

Speaker bio:

Janice Katz is the Roger L. Weston Associate Curator of Japanese Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.  She has been with the museum for over 20 years where she curates quarterly exhibitions of Japanese prints.  She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2004. Her research focuses on paintings from the Edo period (1615-1868) and the history of art collecting in Japan. Her publications include Japanese Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2003), and Beyond Golden Clouds: Japanese Screens from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum (2009), an exhibition which traveled from Chicago to St. Louis and San Francisco. Her most recent major exhibition at the Art Institute, Painting the Floating World: Ukiyo-e Masterpieces from the Weston Collection, and its accompanying catalogue, focused on ukiyo-e paintings of the 17th through 20th centuries.

April 6, 6:30 – 7:30 PM

Speaker: Mira Locher
Topic: Zen Gardens in Japan

Architect and educator Mira Locher explores the cultural history and design principles of Zen Buddhist gardens in Japan. Starting with significant gardens from history and ending with contemporary Zen landscapes designed by Buddhist Priest Shunmyo Masuno, this talk explores the time-honored and thought-provoking design of Zen gardens and their valuable role in the present day.

Global Speed: Japan
February 2, 6:30 – 7:30 PM

Speaker: Miwako Tezuka

“What Emerges after the Floating World”
Hokusai and Yayoi Kusama may be household names in the art world today. But how was the bridge between then and now, between the pre-modern and the contemporary, built in our consciousness? This talk will trace back the “making-of” of the field of postwar (post-1945) Japanese art and its continuing impact on world art history.

About the Speaker

Dr. Miwako Tezuka is Associate Director of the Reversible Destiny Foundation, a progressive artist foundation in New York established by Arakawa and Madeline Gins. Previously, she held the positions of Gallery Director of Japan Society, New York (2012–15), and Curator of Contemporary Art at Asia Society Museum, New York (2005–12). She has curated numerous exhibitions of artists, including Kimsooja, Maya Lin, Mariko Mori, Yoshitomo Nara, Pinaree Sanpitak, teamLab, Yang Fudong, among many others. Her most recent project as Associate Curator includes the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2022. Tezuka holds a doctorate in post-war Japanese art history from Columbia University and is Co-Director of PoNJAGenKon, a global network of over 250 postwar Japanese art scholars and curators.

Otherworldly 2021 – 2022

Global Speed: Otherworldly with professor Bridget Cooks

Conjure: Art and the Black Supernatural

In this presentation, Cooks will discuss expressions of faith and the supernatural in art featured in the game changing exhibitions Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art, Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch, and beyond.

About the Speaker

Bridget R. Cooks is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on African American artists, Black visual culture, and museum criticism. Cooks has worked in museum education and has curated several exhibitions including, Grafton Tyler Brown: Exploring California, (2018) (Pasadena Museum of California Art; Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective at the California African American Museum (2019) (CAAM) and the nationally touring exhibition. The Black Index.

She is author of the book Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum (University of Massachusetts Press, 2011). Some of her other publications can be found in Afterall, Afterimage, American Studies, Aperture, and American Quarterly. She is currently completing her next book titled, Norman Rockwell: The Civil Rights Paintings.




Global Speed: Otherworldly with artist John Jota Leaños

Settler Haunting: Phantom Presence in American Memory
Artist John Jota Leaños explores the presence of settler colonial haunting and the specters of historical amnesia in the American landscape and psyche. Through the animation of historical narratives and speculative Indigeneity, this talk highlights Leaños’s work on memory, haunting, territory, and history.

About the Speaker
John Jota Leaños is a Mestizo (Xicano/Italian-American/Chumash) interdisciplinary artist and animator concerned with the embattled terrains of history and memory as they relate to nation, power and decolonization. A Guggenheim Fellow of Film and Media, Creative Capital Artist and United States Artist (USArtist) Fellow, Leaños’s practice includes a range of media arts, documentary animation, video, public art, installation and performance. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, PBS.org, the Whitney Biennial, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Cannes Film Festival, France; PBS.orgManifesta 13: La Biennale Européenne de Création Contemporaine, aluCine Toronto Latin@ Media Festival, Ars Electronica 2020, Tehran International Animation Festival, Iran, and other venues. Leaños’ animated films have won Best Animation at the 39th Annual American Indian Film Festival, XicanIndie Film Festival, Denver, Best Animation, Arizona International Film Festival, 2021 Cult Critic Awards, and VideoFest, San Francisco. He is currently a Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Department of Film and Digital Media.

Tony Oursler (b. 1957, New York; lives and works in New York) is best known for his innovative integration of video, sculpture, and performance. While studying at the California Institute of Arts, Oursler was influenced by John Baldessari, who taught him, Mike Kelley, John Miller, and Jim Shaw the importance of the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language. A pioneering figure in new media since the 1970s, Oursler has since explored diverse methods of incorporating video into his practice, breaking video art out of the two-dimensional screen to create moving three-dimensional environments with the use of projections. At the center of Oursler’s practice is a persisting preoccupation with technology and its effect on humanity, and in his immersive installations he presents a dissonance of moving image and sound that seeks to disorient and disarm viewers. His videos often take as their subject the human face, fragmenting and distorting its physiognomy, and thus the legibility of expression, by projecting it onto inanimate objects or embedding it into his sculptures. With these video-sculptures Oursler explores the role that the rapid growth of technology plays in altering, and often inhibiting, human social behavior.

Originally aired October 26, 2021 via Zoom webinar

Egypt 2020 – 2021

Ancient Egyptian mummies have gripped the popular imagination from early times. Mummies have been regarded as immortals, a source of medicine, terrifying monsters, and objects of curiosity. Now they are regarded as an invaluable source of information of funerary beliefs, technology, ancient diet, and the health of the ancient Egyptians. This lecture explores the history of mummies in the post-Pharaonic era, as well as how the Ancient Egyptians mummified their dead.

Dr. Ikram has worked on several excavations in Egypt as well as in the Sudan, Greece, and Turkey. Her research interests include death, daily life, archaeozoology, the relationship between animals and humans, ethnoarchaeology, rock art, environmental history, experimental archaeology, and the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage.

Originally aired February 16, 2021 via Zoom webinar

In his Global Speed lecture, Bob Brier, aka “Mr. Mummy,” discusses why we are so fascinated with ancient Egypt, describing the events that fanned the flames of Egyptomania: Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign, the opening of the Suez Canal, and Paris, London and New York bringing obelisks to their shores. Perhaps the greatest boost to Egyptomania was Howard Carter’s discovery of the intact tomb of Tutankhamen, but the frenzy didn’t stop with the discovery. Later, in the 1970s, traveling exhibitions of the boy-king’s treasures kept keep the momentum going.

About the Speaker:
Affectionately known as Mr. Mummy, Dr. Bob Brier is recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on mummies and Egyptology. As Senior Research Fellow at Long Island University/LIU Post in Brookville, New York, he has conducted pioneering research in mummification practices and has investigated some of the world’s most famous mummies, including King Tut, Vladimir Lenin, Ramses the Great, Eva Peron (Evita), Marquise Tai (Chinese noblewoman), and the Medici family of Renaissance Italy. Global Speed is a community lecture series featuring international figures in the art world, to entertain and inform on global art topics.

Originally took place on October 27, 2020.

Global Speed: Egypt with Kara Cooney

The Woman Who Ruled the World

Almost no evidence of successful, long-term female leaders exists from the ancient world – in the Mediterranean, Near East, Africa, Central Asia, or East Asia. Only the female king of Egypt, Hatshepsut, was able to take on formal power for any considerable length of time, and even she had to share power with a male ruler. Given this social reality, how then did Hatshepsut apply her political genius and negotiate her leadership role? This lecture will work through the ample evidence for Hatshepsut’s reign in an attempt to find the woman behind the statues, monuments, stelae, and obelisks.

About the Speaker:
Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. Cooney’s research in coffin reuse, primarily focusing on the 21st Dynasty, is ongoing. Her research investigates the socioeconomic and political turmoil that have plagued the period, ultimately affecting funerary and burial practices in ancient Egypt. This project has taken her around the world over the span of five to six years to study and document more than 300 coffins in collections around the world, including Cairo, London, Paris, Berlin, and Vatican City. Her first trade book, The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt is an illuminating biography of its least well-known female king and was published in 2014 by Crown Publishing Group. Her latest book, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, was published in 2018 by National Geographic Press.

Originally aired on April 20, 2021.

Austria 2019 – 2020

With the Speed’s first major equine art show, Tales from the Turf: The Kentucky Horse, 1825-1950, opening November 15, the Speed is excited to host #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Elizabeth Letts, whose book, The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazistells the remarkable rescue story of the priceless Lipizzaner stallions from the Spanish Riding School of Vienna in the closing days of World War II. The upheaval of Austria’s arts and cultural heritage during the war will be further explored throughout this year’s Global Speed series. Join us for an evening of dramatic storytelling featuring a prized and beloved symbol of Austria’s culture.

About the Speaker
ELIZABETH LETTS is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of both historical fiction and non-fiction. #1 New York Times Bestseller The Eighty-Dollar Champion was a 2011 Indie Next Pick, a Goodreads Reader’s Choice Finalist and winner of the 2012 Daniel P. Lenehan Award for Media Excellence from the United States Equestrian Foundation and is currently in development as a feature film at MGM Studios. Her second work of non-fiction, The Perfect Horse, was a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the 2017 Pen USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction and is available in a young reader edition. Her most recent book, Finding Dorothy, is on sale now. She is also the author of two novels, Quality of Care and Family Planning, and an award-winning children’s book, The Butter Man. A graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Nursing, she is a passionate equestrian, a former certified nurse-midwife, and she served in the Peace Corps in Morocco. She lives in Southern California and Northern Michigan.

Support provided by Ms. A. Cary Brown and the W.L. Lyons Brown, Jr Charitable Foundation
Photo by Ted Catanzaro

September 24, 2019

Mexico 2018 – 2019

Dr. Adriana Zavala lead a discussion on how the artist Frida Kahlo has been interpreted as a popular icon. Springing from Kahlo’s popular celebrity, Dr. Zavala proposed more nuanced interpretations of Kahlo’s life and art that historicize her embrace of indigenous traditions and her gender bending tendencies.

Adriana Zavala is Associate Professor of modern and contemporary Latin American and US Latinx art history at Tufts University. She earned a PhD in Art History from Brown University. Her book Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition: Women Gender and Representation in Mexican Art (PSU Press, 2010) won the Arvey Prize from the Association of Latin American Art in 2011. She has curated several exhibitions including “Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life” at The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx in 2015, with the accompanying catalog Frida Kahlo’s Garden (Prestel 2015), and “Lola Álvarez Bravo: The Photography of an Epoch,” with accompanying catalog for the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera in Mexico City, the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, and the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona (2011).  She has authored essays in exhibition catalogs and journals, as well as a comprehensive annotated bibliography on Frida Kahlo for Oxford Bibliographies online.  She is also the founding director of the US Latinx Art Forum (uslaf.org) a non-profit organization that generates and supports initiatives that advance the vitality of Latinx art through an intergenerational network that spans academia, art institutions, and collections.

December 11, 2018

Axólotl [or The Walking Fish]: A Constellation of Recent Mexican Art

Contemporary art curator Humberto Moro spoke about a selection of artworks related to specific spaces and exhibitions in and around Mexico City, using Roger Bartra’s argument of what it means to be Mexican in comparison to the biology of the axólotl or the walking fish.

Since 2010 Moro has created a series of “constellations” or texts, which employ a multiplicity of condensed references in the form of lists. Moro’s most recent piece, “Imaginary Lines: A Constellation about Art and Borders,” was published in Art Papers in fall 2018.

About the Speaker: Humberto Moro, (B. Guadalajara, Mexico, 1982) is curator at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, where he has organized solo exhibitions by Glen Fogel, Mario Navarro, Oliver Laric, Liliana Porter, Cynthia Gutiérrez, Pia Camil, Mariana Castillo Deball, Tom Bur, Yang Fudong, etc. Moro was curator of New Proposals and SAMPLE, sections at Zona MACO, Mexico City. He was most recently director and curator at large for Colección Diéresis, Guadalajara. He was previously assistant curator and collection coordinator at Museo Jumex, Mexico City. Independently, Moro has curated exhibition projects such as Residual Historical Haunting at Johannes Vogt Gallery, New York; Overburden at the Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Measuring the Distance by Gonzalo Lebrija at La Casa Encendida, Madrid; and Witness of The Century at Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ), Guadalajara. He was recipient of the Estancia Tabacalera Research Award for Latin-American curators 2016, Madrid, Spain, and was part of the 7th Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course, in Gwangju, South Korea. He has written about the work of Jose Dávila, Guillermo Mora, Ana Tiscornia and Tom Burr, and published the books Possibility of Disaster by Gonzalo Lebrija and, Sedimental by Tom Burr, among others. Moro holds a BFA in painting by the Universidad de Guanajuato, Guanajuato, and a MA in curatorial studies by the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York.

Photo credit: Ernesto Solana

Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 6:30 pm

Were they enslaved? A close look at female Jaina figurines

Unpack the complexity of Maya social life with Dr. Mary Miller, distinguished art historian and director of the Getty Research Institute. Dr. Miller will examine figurines from Jaina, an island off the Yucatan mainland known for elite burial sites, and ask who were these weavers, these warriors, these amorous women, these faithful companions of the dead?

About the Speaker: Mary Miller became director of the Getty Research Institute on January 1, 2019. She served as Dean of Yale College from 2008-2014 and was the first woman to hold this position.

Dr. Miller earned her A.B. from Princeton and her Ph.D. from Yale. At Yale, she also served as chair of the Department of History of Art, chair of the Council on Latin American Studies, director of Graduate Studies in Archeological Studies, and as a member of the Steering Committee of the Women Faculty Forum at Yale. From 2016-2018, she was Senior Director of the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage on Yale’s West Campus.

Tuesday, June 18, 2019, 6:30 pm

The Netherlands 2017 – 2018

Henry Luttikhuizen
“Looking for Love in the Low Countries”

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dutch artists addressed a variety of themes associated with lust and love, ranging from the proposition of prostitutes to the promise of marital bliss. These tantalizing images offered ample opportunities to delight in human folly, to recognize the risks of romance, and envision the possibility of matrimonial harmony.

Henry Luttikhuizen is Professor Art History at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI.  He is the co-author of two major textbooks, Medieval Art and Northern Renaissance Art. Luttikhuizen has written numerous essays and curated many exhibitions, most recently, Stirring the World: German Printmaking in the Age of Luther. He has also served as the President of the Midwest Art History Society and as the President of the American Association of Netherlandic Studies.

November 14, 2017

Dr. Betsy Wieseman
“Beautiful Bounty: Flower Painting in the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century”

From the late sixteenth century through the end of the eighteenth, Dutch and Flemish painters were renowned for their skill in the detailed representation of Flora’s most beautiful specimens. Whether a simple record of a single rare tulip or an extravagant display comprising hundreds of different flowers, their exquisite paintings were avidly sought by collectors throughout Europe. This talk will investigate the reasons why flower painting became such a specialty of Dutch painters during the period and take a closer look at some of the more unusual and intriguing specimens of flora and fauna included in these colorful displays.

February 6, 2018

About Dr. Betsy Wieseman
Marjorie E. (Betsy) Wieseman joined the Cleveland Museum of Art in April 2017 as the Paul J. and Edith Ingalls Vignos Jr. Curator of European Paintings and Sculpture, 1500–1800. Prior to joining the CMA, she served as Curator of Dutch Paintings 1600–1800 at the National Gallery, London, from 2006–2012; from 2012–2017 she was also responsible for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Flemish paintings. At the National Gallery she curated numerous exhibitions, including Dutch Flowers (2016); Rembrandt: The Late Works (2014–2015); Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure (2013); Close Examinations: Fakes, Mistakes, and Discoveries (2010); and Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals (2007).

Before moving to London, Wieseman held curatorial positions at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College. She has contributed to numerous exhibitions in the field of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting, including most recently: Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry (2017); Beyond Caravaggio (2016); and Vermeer and Rembrandt: The Masters of the 17th Century Dutch Golden Age (2016). She has also published scholarly essays and articles on a wide range of topics in the fields of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Netherlandish art, portrait miniatures, technical art history, and the history of collecting.

Wieseman earned her PhD from Columbia University, and her BA and MA degrees from the University of Delaware. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Robert H. and Clarice Smith Fellowship from CASVA, a Theodore Rousseau Fellowship from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a Fulbright Grant for Graduate Study Abroad.

Dr. Wayne Franits
“A Gilded Cage in a Golden Age? Women in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art”

Seventeenth-century Dutch artists depicted women of all ages engaged in an assortment of roles and tasks, ranging from wholesome domestic types, to prostitutes and greedy old hags. Despite the variety of themes, images of women, like all Dutch paintings, cannot be considered literal transcriptions of the life and times of contemporary Hollanders. To the contrary, they are fictitious constructs that creatively synthesize observed facts, artistic inventions, and longstanding conventions. In this sense then, these paintings more faithfully address contemporary ideals, prejudices, and popular thought concerning women. By systematically exploring paintings of women, this lecture will address the important question of how Dutch culture helped to forge specific subject matter in art that expressed specific points of view, ones that rarely coincided with actual circumstances.

May 15, 2018

About Dr. Wayne Franits:

A specialist in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art, Wayne Franits received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1987. Since that time, he has been a member of the faculty at Syracuse University in upstate New York, where he currently holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Art History. Franits’s extensive publications have explored a variety of topics within the field, ranging from genre painting and portraiture to the work of the Dutch followers of Caravaggio. To this end, he has published a critically acclaimed survey of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting, as well as monographs on Hendrick ter Brugghen (2007), Dirck van Baburen (2013), and Johannes Vermeer (2015). And his most recent book, a study of the London period of Godefridus Schalcken, was released in June 2018.

France 2016 – 2017

Jean d’Haussonville, General Manager of the National Estate of Chambord
“Chambord Castle and Leonardo da Vinci”

The château of Chambord is one of the most unique and innovative structures handed down to us from the Renaissance. Built at the outset of the 16th century for the glory of King François I, ever since that time it has been a source of amazement and fascination due to the audacity of its architecture, in which French as well as Italian conceptions are graciously embodied.

According to the latest research, doesn’t this “utopia of stone”, whose designer has remained anonymous, constitute the last work and the architectural testament of the most admirable genius of them all, Leonardo da Vinci?

February 7, 2017 

Flavie Durand-Ruel Mouraux, Director of the Durand-Ruel Archives
“Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922) Friend and Art-Dealer of the Impressionists”

Paul Durand-Ruel inherited his father’s gallery in 1862 and quickly earned a reputation for promoting the Barbizon artists. In the 1870’s Paul met Monet, Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Sisley, Renoir, Boudin, Cassatt and Morisot and immediately became their defender, embarking on a crusade, which would dominate the next twenty years of his life, to win public appreciation and recognition of their pictures. This lecture relates to the life of Paul Durand-Ruel and centered around the discovery and relationships with the Barbizon artists and Impressionists as well as his innovative principles as an art dealer.

May 16, 2017

Emmanuel Ducamp, Professeur à l’Ecole du Louvre
“Great collections of Imperial Russia: A passion for French works of art”

From the mid-eighteenth century to the 1917 Revolution, both the Russian sovereigns and the St. Petersburg aristocracy or later the Moscow entrepreneurs developed a unique taste for French works of art, would it be furniture and objects d’art or paintings and sculpture. This lecture will examine this unequalled passion, from Sèvres porcelain and Georges Jacob chairs to paintings by Chardin and Greuze purchased by Catherine the Great in the 1780s to Impressionist and avant-garde works by Monet and Matisse selected by Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin at the turn of the twentieth century.

November 15, 2016

Italy 2015 – 2016

Vivien Greene, Senior Curator of 19th and Early 20th Century Art at the Guggenheim
“Italian Futurism, 1909 – 1944: Reconstructing the Universe”

Vivien Greene gave a comprehensive overview of Italian Futurism, one of Europe’s most important 20th-century avant-gardes. Until 2014, when the Guggenheim Museum showed 350 works by 80 artists in a multi-disciplinary exhibition, the historical sweep of Futurism had yet to be examined in the United States. Greene discussed this presentation, which she curated, and its effort to reassess the Futurist movement and clarify the complexities of its full history.

April 12, 2016

Massimiliano Gioni is the Artistic Director of the New Museum in New York and the Director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan.

He has curated numerous international exhibitions and biennials including: Manifesta 5 (2004, with Marta Kuzma); the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006, with Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick); the 8th Gwangju Biennale (2010). In 2013 he curated the 55th Venice Biennial, of which he was the youngest director in its 110 years long history.

May 17, 2016