Fall Public Programs

The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts presents its fall season of online programming, with conversations between Cauleen Smith and Amber Esseiva; Ja’Tovia Gary and Frank B. Wilderson III; David Reinfurt and Larissa Harris; and Kemi Adeyemi with Jessica Bell Brown, Lauren Haynes, and Jamillah James.

For each of these conversations, the Carpenter Center will publish a limited-edition booklet with an edited transcript of the exchange, images, and biographical material. These booklets will be made available for free both as digital downloads and in hard copy upon request. In this time of online gathering, this publication series is meant to serve as a material record of Carpenter Center programming and an art historical resource for future scholars and artists.  

The first booklet in this series, In Conversation: Tony Cokes and Christoph Cox, presents an April 9, 2020 Zoom conversation between artist Tony Cokes and critic Christoph Cox and is available for download now. To request a free copy of In Conversation: Tony Cokes and Christoph Cox, and for more information on our fall programming, please visit our schedule of fall events.  

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Conversation: Cauleen Smith and Amber Esseiva
Thursday, September 10, 2020, 7:30–9pm EST

Artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith will discuss her practice and recent work with Amber Esseiva, Assistant Curator at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Conversation and Screening: Ja’Tovia Gary and Frank B. Wilderson III
Thursday, October 8, 2020, 6–8:30pm EST

Artist and filmmaker Ja’Tovia Gary will discuss her recent film, The Giverny Document (2019), alongside Frank B. Wilderson III, author of Afropessimism (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2020). The event will open with a screening of The Giverny Document with a conversation to follow. This event is co-organized with the graduate students in Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies and is presented as part of the (Im)possibility conference, ongoing from October 8–10, 2020. The Giverny Document will be available on the Carpenter Center’s website for the duration of the conference.

Conversation: David Reinfurt and Larissa Harris
Thursday, November 19, 2020, 7:30–9pm EST

In 1967, Italian designer Bruno Munari was invited to Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts to teach a course on graphic design. From this course, Munari produced the textbook Design e Comunicazione Visiva. In the context of Munari’s work and pedagogy, David Reinfurt will discuss his recent book A *New* Program for Graphic Design (Inventory Press, 2019) with Larissa Harris, curator at the Queens Museum of Art.

Conversation: Kemi Adeyemi with Jessica Bell Brown, Lauren Haynes, and Jamillah James
Thursday, December 10, 2020, 7:30–9pm EST

Kemi Adeyemi, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington and founder of the Black Embodiments Studio, will lead a conversation with curators Jessica Bell Brown (The Baltimore Museum of Art), Lauren Haynes (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), and Jamillah James (Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) building on Adeyemi’s recently-published oral history project, “Black Women Curators: A Brief Oral History of the Recent Past.”

Support
Generous support for Carpenter Center programs is provided by the Division of Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University; and the Friends of the Carpenter Center: Fotene and Tom Coté, John Morace and Thomas Kennedy, and John R. and Barbara Robinson.