Robert Storr

Robert Storr, Dean of Visual Arts at Yale will be giving his lecture, Kara Walker: Shadow Caster at the University of Oregon, on March 6th at 6:00 PM. The school will live stream it, but you should absolutely try to see their on campus exhibition, Kara Walker: Emancipating the Past at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. As you can see... it is very different and executed far better than the Walker show at Reed in 2012. The install is spacious and the video work, "National Archives Microfilm Publication M999 Roll 34: Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands: Six Miles from Springfield on the Franklin Road," at the JSMA is perhaps my favorite of her video works. It is a must see and bound to be one of the best shows of the year in Oregon.


Kara Walker at JSMA

Besides being perhaps the most accomplished academic/critic/curator combo on the planet, Storr has a special window into Kara Walker's work. He curated the 2004 Site Santa Fe Biennial, "Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque," which included Walker's first video. I was there when it was unveiled and Storr's grasp of history as a continually evolving grotesque makes him better at talking about Walker's work than Walker herself (that isn't a slight, I'm very sure she'd rather not talk much about it and just let its subversions and ugly truths operate visually but no artist gets to do that).

Robert Storr: Kara Walker Shadow Caster
March 6th, 6:00 PM
Lawrence Hall, Room 177
University of Oregon
1190 Franklin Boulevard, Eugene, OR

How do I tune in to the Robert Storr talk?

Jeff I've updated the link now that is is on the U of O's site, here it is as well: http://media.uoregon.edu/channel/2014/02/04/robert-storr-visiting-artist-lecture/