Events Calendar

"Objects, Sculptures, Locations" is a 3-day lunchtime lecture series that is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Alumni Fellow visit of world-renowned sculptor Charles Ray (BA '75, Art).

The series includes these lectures:

• Objects in Relation to the Arts: a Lunchtime Lecture by Graham Harman; Professor of Philosophy, Southern California Institute of Architecture
• Sculptures Made by Ghosts: a Lunchtime Lecture by Charles Ray
• Sculpture and Space in Greece: Then and Now a Lunchtime Lecture by Richard Neer; Professor of Art History, University of Chicago

All three lectures will take place in 240 Art Building West.

Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Born in Iowa City in 1968, he attended public schools in nearby Mt. Vernon. He is the author of more than 300 articles and 17 books, most recently Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (2018) and Speculative Realism: An Introduction (2018).

Alumni Fellow Charles Ray, A 1975 graduate of the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History, has had solo museum exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago (2015), Kunstmuseum Basel (2014), Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2006), and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998). His work has been included in Documenta IX (1992), three iterations of the Venice Biennial (1993, 2003, 2013), and five installments of the Whitney Biennial (1989, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2010). Christopher Knight wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Charles Ray's "career as an artist…is easily among the most important of the last twenty years."

Richard Neer works at the intersection of aesthetics, archaeology and the history of art in multiple fields: Classical Greek sculpture, early modern French painting, stylistics, and mid-20th century cinema. His Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley (History of Art, 1998), his A.B. from Harvard College (Fine Arts, 1991). He has received fellowships and awards from the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the J. Paul Getty Trust and the American Academy in Rome. From 2010 to 2018 he was the Executive Editor of Critical Inquiry, where he continues to serve as co-editor. In Spring 2019 he will be a Senior Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. From Summer 2019 he will be Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

Other events associated with the Alumni Fellow visit of Charles Ray:

• My Soul is an Object: Artist Talk with Charles Ray
• Campus Sculpture Walk with Charles Ray and Director Lauren Lessing, UI Stanley Museum of Art