Art historian, theorist, curator and critic Patricia Phillips of the Rhode Island School of Design is the featured speaker for the 2012 Goldfarb Lecture in Visual Arts at York University. Her talk, titled “(un)Public: A Case for Collateral Art“, focuses on the nature and reception of public art.
In her illustrated lecture, Phillips will discuss the peripatetic, restless scope and range of art in public spaces, and how this makes critical work on the topic an engaging and bracing, yet somewhat speculative activity.
Date:Â Wednesday, February 1 at 5pm
Location:Â Room 004 Accolade West Building, York University, 4700 Keele St. Â Â
“The variables and vagaries of art in the public realm are different, and potentially more complex, than art encountered in the more rarified environments of museums and galleries,” Phillips says. “Public art invokes the idea of ‘accidental’ publics, spontaneous affiliations and unpredictable temporalities.”
Dr. Phillips’ research and critical writing involve contemporary art, public art, architecture, landscape and the intersection of these areas. Her essays and reviews have been featured in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Sculpture and Public Art Review, as well as in books and essay collections published by Rizzoli International Publications, Princeton Architectural Press, M.I.T. Press, Routledge and other leading publishers. She is the author of Ursula von Rydingsvard: Working (New York: Prestel, 2011) and It is Difficult, a survey of the work of Alfredo Jaar (Barcelona: Actar Press, 1998).
From 2002 to 2007, Phillips served as editor-in-chief of the Art Journal, a quarterly publication on contemporary art published by the College Art Association. She was Dean of Graduate Studies and currently serves as Interim Associate Provost for Academic Affairs at the Rhode Island School of Design.