'Curating Contemporary Culture' lecture series announced

5 p.m., March 5, 2007--“Curating Contemporary Culture,” a series of six lectures by leading curators of contemporary art whose work has transcended disciplinary boundaries to break new ground in presenting and understanding contemporary culture, will be presented this spring at UD.

UD's Department of Art and University Museums, with support from the National Endowment of Humanities and the Delaware Humanities Forum, will present the lectures. Three of the six lectures are scheduled for March and April.

Melissa Chiu, museum director and curator of contemporary art at the Asia Society in New York City, will speak at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 15, in 130 Smith Hall.

Chiu has curated a number of exhibitions including “Paradise Now?
Contemporary Art from the Pacific,” “Cai Guo-Qiang, An Explosion Event: Light Cycle Over Central Park,” “TOOBA: Shirin Neshat and China Refigured: The Art of Ah Xian.” She also co-curated “One Way or Another: Asian Art Now,” currently on view in the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston.

Chiu was a founding member of the Asian Contemporary Art Consortium and a driving force behind the establishment of Asian Contemporary Art Week, which will mark its third year this November in New York City.

Carlos Basualdo, curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will lecture on his most recent exhibition, “Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture,” at 7 p.m., Monday, April 2, in the Trabant Theatre of the Trabant University Center.

Basualdo's “Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture” has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York, the Centro Cultural de Belem in Lisbon, Portugal, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Barbican Art Gallery in London and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Basualdo has served as chief curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and as a member of the 2002 curatorial team of “Documenta 11” in Kassel, Germany. Basualdo is a regular contributor to Artforum and Artnexus and a member of the editorial board of Atlántica and ARCO Noticias.

Bill Arning, curator of the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will speak at 1 p.m., Friday, April 6, in the Trabant Theatre of the Trabant University Center.

Arning's exhibitions include “Son et Lumière,” “Inside Space-Experiments in Redefining Rooms,” “AA Bronson's Mirror Mirror” and “Influence, Anxiety and Gratitude.” Arning's articles on art and culture have appeared in Time Out New York, Aperture, The Village Voice, Art in America and Parkett.

The remaining three lectures in the series have yet to be announced.

A reception will follow each lecture. For more information call (302) 831-2706 or visit [www.udel.edu/museums].

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