DIRECTOR'S FORUM. Leveraging the convening power of Cornell to concentrate on special topics of interest to a group of scholars and artists, lectures and symposia highlight topical themes of interest to a broad sector of artists and creative professionals.  Since 2002, the CCA has invited the following lecturers to campus:  Architect Marco Steinberg of the Harvard Design School (2006), Lowery Stokes Sims - Adjunct Curator-Studio Museum in Harlem (2006), Industrial designer Josh Owen (2006), Artist Patrick Dougherty (2005), Artist Fred Wilson (2004), Christine Y. Kim - Curator-Studio Museum in Harlem (2004), and Filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones (2002).

PAST LECTURES / SYMPOSIA

11.06.06: MARCO STEINBERG

MARCO STEINBERG
Associate Professor of Architecture at the Harvard Design School and Principal of NB Architecture

Marco Steinberg's work focuses on strategic design development within the industrial design / architecture disciplinary boundaries.  Steinberg received his BFA and BARCH from Rhode Island School of Design and his MARCH with distinction from the Harvard Design School.  Featured in "40 Under 40 Finland," his books include Prototype for a Plywood Wheelchair; Material Legacies: Bamboo, and co-authorship of Digital Design and Manufacturing; Patient Transport Module: Stroke PTM Feasibility Study, and contributor to numerous other books and publications.  He is the co-organizer of "New Technologies in Architecture" a design conference series on the impact of CAD/CAM processes on the profession, at Harvard.

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10.30.06: MUSEUM IN / AS CONTEXT

LOWERY STOKES SIMS
Adjunct Curator of the Permanent Collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem + Cornell University A.D. White Professor-at-Large

The museum in context extends the mission of the museum beyond connoisseurship into the physical and social conditions of its environment; the museum as context highlights the musuem as a unique apparatus of meaning - uniquely separate from other modes of reception in the culture. The panel will explore the oscillation between these two aspects of the museum.
Panelists from the Cornell Department of Architecture: Milton S.F. Curry, Cornell Council for the Arts Director; Felecia Davis, and Mary Woods.

Lowery Stokes Sims earned her PhD in Art History from City University of New York and has worked as part of the education and curatorial staff at the Metropolitan Museum of ARt and then as the Executive Direcgtor of The Studio Museum in Harlem.  Her knowledge and assesment of painting and sculpture and of installation and performance led her to developing programs and exhibitions, tracking trends in the visual arts, and recommending acquisitions for permanent collections.  Throughout her career, Dr. Sims has engaged in issues around funding for the arts and dialogues around censorship and freedom of expression both through advocacy and through public policy.

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02.28.06  OBJECTS IN SPACE

JOSH OWEN '93, '94
Industrial designer, assistant professor, Philadelphia University

Josh Owen is principal of Josh Owen LLC in Philadelphia and assistant professor of industrial design at Philadelphia University. His graphic and industrial design studio was established in 1998. Owen received his BFA ’93 in sculpture and BA ’94 in visual studies from Cornell, and his MFA in furniture design at RISD. In 2002 he was the youngest designer to be included in the critically acclaimed “American Design, 1975-2000” at the Denver Art Museum. In 2003, Owen was recognized by Surface Magazine as one of the most avant-garde industrial designers in the United States. His design and furniture work was exhibited at Salone Internationale del Mobile in Milan, and at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City. In 2004 he was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s Design Encyclopedia , and in 2005 the monograph, Josh Owen: Big Ideas / Small Packages was published by Woodsphere Publishing. Owen lectured to a full capacity audience at the H. F. Johnson Museum Lecture Room. Earlier in the day, he participated in a masterclass in “Architecture 459: Objects in Space” – critiquing student designs for prototypes for furniture and industrial

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11.01.05  PRIMITIVE WAYS IN AN ACCELERATED WORLD

PATRICK DOUGHERTY
Artist

Patrick Dougherty, the internationally renowned installation artist, presented a lecture on his work – Primitive Ways in an Accelerated World - at Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, on November 1, 2005. Earlier in the day, Dougherty held a masterclass at the Hartell Gallery in Sibley Hall.

Patrick Dougherty is the most influential sculptor working in North Carolina and unquestionably one of the most original sculptors in America.

Dougherty’s body of work exhibits individual sensibility, stylistic consistency, and a complexity grounded in spontaneous imagination. His site-specific sculptures encompass architecture and landscape architecture – engaging unique conditions associated with interior and exterior spatial environments - horticulture, and structural engineering. The large-scale sculptures – such as Whim Wham (Laumeier Sculpture Park, 1992), Crossing Over (American Craft Museum, 1996), Full Court Press (Munson-William-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art, 2001) and Na Hale O Waiawi (The Contemporary Museum/ Honolulu, 2003) are fluid expressions of notation lines in space, resulting in a threshold where architecture, art and landscape merge, producing a sculptural hybrid folly constructed with large branches and woven maple and willow saplings

In September, 2006, Patrick Dougherty will be in residence at Cornell to produce a public installation work in Collegetown on College Avenue. This will be the first public art installation at Cornell since Andy Goldsworthy’s work over five years ago. Amaechi Okigbo, Associate Professor or Landscape Architecture, has been appointed Project Curator, and will be coordinating with the artist in site selection, coordinating with university officials, City of Ithaca, and other constituencies in the preparation of the project in Fall 2006.

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03.04.04: SPEAK OF ME AS I AM: THE VENICE PROJECT

FRED WILSON
Artist

Fred Wilson was the US representative to the recent Venice Biennale – his talk was part of a series of lectures hosted by Africana Studies titled, RACE, ETHNICITY + DIASPORA .

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04.14.04  BLACK BELT / CULTURAL HYBRIDITY IN AMERICAN ART

CHRISTINE Y. KIM
Assistant Curator, The Studio Museum in Harlem

Christine Y. Kim will speak about Black Belt, a cross-cultural and inter-generational exhibition of 44 works of art by 19 living American artists of diverse backgrounds that she curated at The Studio Museum in Harlem October 2003 - January 2004. The works and the theme of the show speak to black and urban fascinations with Eastern martial arts philosophy and Afro-Asian cultural connections.

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09.02: LECTURE + FILMSCREENING: 500 DUNAM ON THE MOON

RACHEL LEAH JONES
Independent filmmaker

Rachel Leah Jones, and independent fimmaker, participated in a masterclass and film screening related to her directorial debut, 500 DUNAM ON THE MOON, an imaginative film documentarty shot on location in Ayn Hawd al-Jadida, Ein Hod, and Jenin Refugee Camp during August-September, 1999.  Editing commenced in March 2000 and concluded in April 2002.

The movie documents the art of dispossession and the creativity of the dispossessed. The film has been screened at Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, New York. June 2002, Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival, September 2002-March 2003, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, California. July 2002, Tres Continentes: Festival Internacional del Documental, Argentina. September 2002. (Awards: Honorable Mention and Jury's Choice) FotoFest, Houston. September 2002, and CinemaTexas, Austin. September 2002.

In 1948 Israeli forces expelled between 650-950 Palestinians from Ayn Hawd, a 700 year old Moslem village in the Southern Carmel hills. Most of Ayn Hawd's inhabitants ended up in refugee camps on the West and East Banks of the Jordan, while some 150 villagers managed to remain inside the borders of Israel after the war and became what are known in Israel as "Present Absentees." In 1953, while some 418 Palestinian villages depopulated by Israeli forces during the war were being razed to the ground, the village of Ayn Hawd was designated for preservation as an artist’s colony. Ayn Hawd was repopulated with Israel's finest painters, sculptors, and potters. In 1954 the name of the village was officially changed to "Ein Hod" which in Hebrew means "The Spring of Glory" (the Arabic "Ayn Hawd" means "Spring of the Trough"). Today, Ein Hod is the site of a world renowned sculpture biennale, as well as home to numerous galleries, exhibits, festivals, and concerts. It has served as a mecca of Israeli cultural production.