Press Release

July 25, 2006
Contact Vicki Brodnax at 407-646-2526

CORNELL MUSEUM AT ROLLINS TO HOST IMPORTANT VISUAL ARTS SYMPOSIUM

Winter Park, FL – In conjunction with the exhibition Crossing the Line: African American Artists in the Jacqueline Bradley and Clarence Otis, Jr. Collection sponsored by TIAA-CREF Financial Services for the greater good, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College will host an important cultural/visual arts symposium - free to the public - on Friday, January 19, from 10 AM to 4 PM.   The symposium will feature Keynote Speaker Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims from the Studio Museum in Harlem; internationally recognized artists Fred Wilson and Lyle Ashton Harris; art critic, Franklin Sirmans, curator for Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection, Houston; and, Luanne McKinnon, Acting Director at the Cornell and curator of the exhibition.

Lowery Stokes Sims is adjunct curator for the permanent collection at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Visiting Professor at Queens College and Hunter College in New York City.  From 2000 - 2006 Sims was executive director, then president, of The Studio Museum in Harlem.  Previous to those appointments she served for 27 years in the education and curatorial departments of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  A specialist in modern and contemporary art, Dr. Sims is known for her particular expertise in the work of African, Latino, Native and Asian American artists, including her seminal text, Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923-1982.

Fred Wilson represented the United States at the 2003 Venice Biennale.  His multi-media works are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among others.  Wilson is credited for his critical role in shaping art viewing during the last 10 years by creating site-specific installations from permanent museum collections that reveal—and most importantly, critique—racially biased curatorial practices. His re-installations of objects that are not on display, nor have been featured by museums for years, even decades, gives new meaning to them by reinterpreting their function and relationship to culture.

New York based photographer Lyle Ashton Harris, uses himself as the subject in order to construct provocative images that explore complex political and racial issues. In his self portraits, Harris poses as cultural icons, exquisitely veiling his own identity, which work blurs the line between masculinity and femininity and questions social stereotypes of race and sexuality through historical, social, and experimental narratives.  Mr. Harris’ work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the Kunsthalle Basel, and the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva. During 2000 and 2001, Harris was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome.

Franklin Sirmans was co-curator of the exhibition “Basquiat” (2005-06: Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), which sought to demonstrate not only that Basquiat was a key figure in the 1980s, but also that his artistic accomplishments have significance for twentieth-century art as a whole. He was the last major painter in an idiom that had begun decades earlier in Europe with the imitation of African art by modern artists such as Picasso and Matisse. Mr. Sirmans also curated Make it Now: New Sculpture in New York (Sculpture Center, NY, 2005).  A former U.S. editor of the European journal Flash Art and Editor-in-Chief of Art AsiaPacific, Sirmans has written for several visual arts and contemporary culture publications including Art in America, ArtNews and Grand Street as well as The New York Times, Newsweek International and Essence.  Mr. Sirmans has contributed the essay for the full-color “Crossing the Line” catalogue which will accompany the Cornell exhibition.

There is no admission fee for the Cornell Museum’s Crossing the Line symposium sponsored by the Rollins College Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholars/Artists Program.  Normally, the galleries are open 10 AM to 5 PM Tuesday through Saturday, and Sunday 1 to 5 PM.  Admission is $5 for adults.  There is no charge for CFAM Members, or Rollins College Faculty, Staff, and all Students with current ID.  The Cornell Fine Arts Museum is located on the campus of Rollins College near downtown Winter Park. 

For additional information, interviews or images, please call 407-646-2526, or visit www.rollins.edu/cfam.