Robert Atkins, Carrie Moyer, FF Alumns, in Panel Discussion at School of Visual Arts, NYC, Nov. 29, 2001

The Mediation of Art and its Audience in the Age of Mass Culture

Panel Discussion at the School of Visual Arts in New York, sponsored by the Art History Department, November 29 at 8 pm in the Amphitheater, 209 E. 23 Street, third floor.

Who influences and frames the art you see? Marketers? Museums? A shallow, celebrity-obsessed media? Today hype-driven, non-art exhibitions about Jackie O, motorcycles and fashion designers generate huge audiences. At the same time, cultural subversion and digital media are being brought into the institutional fold, which attests to the art-world's ability to consume even apparently uncollectable work. The Art History Department at the School of Visual Arts, as part of its ongoing public inquiry into vital art issues, will present a panel discussion entitled "The Mediation of Art and its Audience in the Age of Mass Culture." The panel will address the issues above and probe the following questions: Is serious artistic and critical inquiry threatened by the accelerating development of art-as-entertainment, and a lack of support for critical writing? Can such trends simultaneously be good for hungry artists and problematic for the culture by co-opting and neutralizing potentially radical artistic practices? Is it time for a new chapter in the critique of institutions and media practices?

Robert Atkins will moderate the panel of noted artists, critics, and arts administrators. An instructor at the Rhode Island College of Design, he is also a Fellow at Carnegie-Mellon's Studio for Creative Inquiry; editor/producer of Artery: The AIDS-Arts Journal & Forum; and arts editor of the Media Channel. Mr. Atkins, a former columnist for The Village Voice, founded TalkBack!: A Forum for Critical Discourse in 1995, and is the author of ArtSpeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements and Buzzwords, and ArtSpoke.

The Panel:
Jeanne Collins worked for nearly two decades heading marketing and communications programs at museums, most recently at the American Museum of Natural History and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1999 she established Jeanne Collins & Associates, a communications and marketing firm for museums and other cultural organizations.

Lawrence Rinder is the curator of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he is currently chief curator of the 2002 Biennial. He co-organized the exhibition "Bit Streams" for the Whitney Museum and has previously worked at the CCAC Institute, Oakland and San Francisco; the Berkeley Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Carrie Moyer is a painter and one half of the public art project, Dyke Action Machine! She is represented by Debs & Co. in New York City. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and has received awards from Creative Capital Foundation, the Peter Norton Family Fund and Art Matters.

Mark Tribe is an artist, curator and the founder/executive director of Rhizome.org. He recently co-curated the computer art section of "Game Show," an exhibition of artists¹ games currently at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, and co-created the interface/browser/artwork "StarryNight."

Jeff Weinstein, fine arts editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, is the former art and architecture editor at The Village Voice. He has written about art, food, and cultural issues for The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, Food & Wine and many other publications. He is the author of two books, Learning to Eat and Life in San Diego.

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