The Impact and Influence of Charles Gaines

Join us for an online conversation between artist Sam Durant; Director of the Yale Center for British Art Courtney J. Martin; Director of Pérez Art Museum Franklin Sirmans; and SFMOMA Curator of Contemporary Art Eungie Joo about the expansive work and influence of conceptual artist Charles Gaines on the occasion of New Work: Charles Gaines (Floor 4, through Sep 12). Gaines will be in attendance.

About the Panelists

Sam Durant is an interdisciplinary artist whose works engage a variety of social, political, and cultural issues. His methodology is research based but with an emphasis on social engagement, often working with communities and groups in collaborative and performative formations. His public project, Untitled (drone) (2016–2020) opens on the High Line, New York, in May 2021.

Franklin Sirmans is director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), where he has overseen the acquisition of more than a thousand works of art and pursued a vision of PAMM as “the people’s museum.” Previously he served as department head and curator of contemporary art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2010–2015) and artistic director of Prospect.3: Notes for Now (2015).

Courtney J. Martin is an art historian. She was named director of the Yale Center for British Art in 2019. Prior to that she was deputy director and chief curator of the Dia Art Foundation in New York and worked at the Ford Foundation. Dr. Martin has presented groundbreaking exhibitions on the work of Rasheed Araeen, Frank Bowling, Sam Gilliam, and Robert Ryman.

Eungie Joo is curator of contemporary art at SFMOMA. In addition to New Work: Charles Gaines, her exhibitions include SOFT POWER (2019); Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible (2015); the 2012 New Museum Generational: The Ungovernables (2012); and the Korean Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, Condensation: Haegue Yang (2009).

About Charles Gaines

Using a generative approach to create series of works in a variety of mediums, Charles Gaines bridges the early conceptual artists of the 1960s and 1970s and subsequent generations of artists pushing the limits of conceptualism today. Gaines has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, and his work is featured in collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He lives and works in Los Angeles, where he is a member of the School of Art faculty at the California Institute of the Arts.
 
 

Support for Public Programs and Artist Talks at SFMOMA is provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Distinguished Lecture Series.