SkowheganTALKS: Lecture Series Organized by the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture Features Conversations between Contemporary Artists Ellen Altfest and Robert Storr

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 3:00PM

SkowheganTALKS, a new lecture series organized by the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, features conversations between some of the most influential visual artists working today. The final talk in the inaugural year of this series will take place on Saturday, May 31, with a conversation between artist Ellen Altfest and curator, writer, painter, and Dean of the Yale School of Art Robert Storr.

SkowheganTALKS features recent alumni of the residency program of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in conversation with artists and others who have been faculty members at Skowhegan. While the association with Skowhegan is the common factor among the speakers, the conversations are not intended to focus on the speakers’ respective experiences at Skowhegan, but rather will address subjects of broader interest including the participating artists' current and past work and the challenges and opportunities that are characteristic of working as an artist today. An especially interesting aspect of SkowheganTALKS is that the conversations are also intended explore the mentor-student relationship, a model that is becoming increasingly important for young artists in New York and worldwide. Because most of the conversations will pair individuals who met at Skowhegan when one was a participant and the other was a faculty member, the speakers have direct mentor-student experience with one another upon which they can draw.

Ellen Altfest received her BFA from Cornell University, her MFA from Yale University School of Art, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2002. From 2003-04 she was awarded a studio at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in Tribeca, New York. She received a Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation grant from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006. She has had solo exhibitions in New York in 2002 and 2005 at Bellwether Gallery and in London in 2007 at White Cube. She has been included in group exhibitions at The Royal Academy of Arts, London, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Artists Space, New York. Altfest has also curated several exhibitions, most recently “Men” at I-20 Gallery, New York, in 2006. Altfest's work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Time Out New York, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Artforum and Modern Painters.

Robert Storr attended Skowhegan in 1978, was a faculty member there in 2002, and is a Skowhegan Governor. In 2006 he was appointed Dean of the Yale School of Art. Previous to this, he was the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. In the spring of 2007 Storr directed the 2007 Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position. From 1990 to 2002 he was the Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), stepping down as Senior Curator in 2002. Storr’s accomplishments span the art world. He is a painter, an art historian and critic, and a prodigious writer about the theory and practice of Art. He has been the curator of many exhibitions at the MoMA and elsewhere, and the author of dozens of monographs and catalogues. He also organized a number of reinstallations of MoMA’s permanent collection, covering such topics as abstraction and the modern grotesque. Storr received his BA from Swarthmore College in 1972 and his MFA in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.

Skowhegan enjoys the benefit of having an exceptionally talented group of alumni and former faculty who maintain a strong connection to the School, and on whom it has drawn for speakers for SkowheganTALKS. Recent graduates include some of the most exciting emerging artists working today, and Skowhegan’s faculty has always included a wide range of renowned mid-career artists.

SkowheganTALKS is organized under the auspices of the Skowhegan Alliance, a group of young alumni who organize activities and projects for the benefit of Skowhegan. Skowhegan would like to thank P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center for hosting SkowheganTALKS. All events are free with admission to P.S.1. Founded by artists in 1946, Skowhegan is one of the country’s foremost artists’ residency communities, providing visual artists with a collaborative and rigorous creative environment for the development of new work. Since 1946 Skowhegan has brought together almost 4,000 artists—many of whom are among the country’s leading artists—as students and faculty for intensive nine-week summer residencies at the School’s picturesque 300-acre lakeside site in rural Maine.

For more information about Skowhegan, visit www.skowheganart.org.

For directions and information about P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, visit www.ps1.org.