The Un-Private Collection: John Currin and James Cuno
Sunday, September 14, 2014, 3pm PT
The Getty Center
Los Angeles
Sold out
In anticipation of the museum’s opening in 2015, The Broad launched The Un-Private Collection, a series of conversations featuring unexpected pairings of cultural leaders and influential artists in the Broad collections, taking place at venues around Los Angeles.
On September 14, artist John Currin joins James Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, to discuss how traditional portraiture has influenced Currin’s modern interpretation of the form. Co-presented with The Broad’s Un-Private Collection art talk series and the Getty Museum’s Getty Perspectives series, their conversation will consider Currin’s works in the Broad collections and classic European paintings and drawings in the Getty collection.
Currin emerged in the 1990s as one of the freshest voices in American art and was among a wave of contemporary artists who established a renewed interest in portraiture. Drawing from sources as diverse as Northern Renaissance paintings and pinup magazines, he is known for his distortions of the human figure and his critiques of societal ideals of beauty. Currin is also known for his contemporary renditions of old master poses and formats that often conflate opposing sensibilities—vaulted taste with vulgarity, sentimentality with irony, and conventional beauty with banality.
James Cuno joined the J. Paul Getty Trust as president and CEO in August 2011. A national and international museum leader and scholar, Cuno was president and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago before joining the Getty. Prior to directing the Art Institute of Chicago, he held positions at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London; Harvard University Art Museums; the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, UCLA; and Vassar College.
Often rife with art-historical references and suggestions, Currin’s work overlays with the Getty’s mission as an institution dedicated to critical thinking in the presentation, conservation, and interpretation of the world’s artistic legacy.
This upcoming talk—the eighth in The Un-Private Collection series—comes on the heels of three extraordinarily successful conversations—Jeff Koons with cult filmmaker John Waters, which drew 1,900 people; Takashi Murakami in conversation with writer Pico Iyer, which attracted over 1,200; and painter Eric Fischl with actor/comedian/writer Steve Martin, which sold out The Broad Stage in Santa Monica. Videos of all past talks in the series are available at thebroad.org. With such turnouts, the series exceeds typical attendance of any other museum lecture series.
This talk is sold out, but a rush line will be available the night-of the event at The Getty Center.
Mark your calendar or sign up for The Broad’s emails to receive a reminder to watch a livestream of the conversation on Sunday, September 14, 3pm PT at www.thebroad.org. Questions from online and in-person audiences are taken for the speakers to address at the end of the program. Tweet @TheBroad using #CurrinCuno to submit your questions.
Upcoming talk in The Un-Private Collection series
Kara Walker and Ava DuVernay
October 11 at Writers Guild Theater
About The Broad
The Broad is a contemporary art museum under construction on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles dedicated to the collections of Eli and Edythe Broad. Designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the museum will open in 2015 and will offer free general admission to all. The Broad will be home to the nearly 2,000 works of art in the Broad collections, which are among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide.
