Seeing Freedom? Livestream Conversation with Elisabeth Anker on the Diverse Meanings of Iconic Images and Objects
Join Beach Museum of Art curator Aileen June Wang andElisabeth R. Anker, associate professor of American studies and political science at George Washington University, for a livestream conversation about the numerous meanings that “iconic” words, images, and objects can have. Professor Anker has done research on how the word “freedom” represented different ideas throughout the history of the United States. This program is offered in conjunction with the exhibition Do You See What I See? currently on display at the Beach Museum of Art. The program and related exhibition are free and open to the public.
Join the free program via Zoom. Click here to register.After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about how to join the program.
The Beach Museum of Art is pleased to announce the launch of the exhibition catalog/ebook “Gordon Parks: Homeward to the Prairie I Come.” The New Prairie Press, Kansas State University’s open access digital press, recently published the exhibition catalog/ebook. It was edited by museum curator Aileen June Wang and features new scholarship about Gordon Parks and his activities in Kansas in the late part of his career. Compiled by members of the K-State Gordon Parks Project, the volume was a collaboration between the university’s department of English and the Beach Museum of Art. The project highlights a past gallery exhibition at the Beach and a current virtual exhibition of photographs gifted by Gordon Parks to K-State. The collection was organized by the Beach Museum of Art, and a digital archive was created by K-State English department with materials and oral histories related to Parks’s film “The Learning Tree.” The collaboration was made possible with major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and additional support from the Gordon Parks Foundation. The exhibition catalog/ebook increases awareness and understanding of Gordon Parks’ artistic practice through photography, poetry, literature, and film. Renowned African American photography scholar and artist Deborah Willis writes that the book “adds wonderfully to [knowledge about] Gordon Parks’ life as it introduces new questions, specifically about sexual abuse in the Learning Tree and the ‘underdiscussed’ activities of Parks’ life.” She adds: “I believe it will have an impact on the genres of memoir, migration, biography, and film studies.”
I first met Aileen when she visited my project Aeromural at the Clocktower Gallery in 2013 with our friend and his baby.
The curator Aileen June Wang and I first met in New York in 2013 when she came to see my project Aeromural at Clocktower Gallery in New York City’s TriBeCa district. Since then, we have become really good friends. We had many conversations about doing a project together. The first idea she raised was a two-person show with Japanese American visual artist Alex Kukai Shinohara. I was excited. She tried to find a venue for the show but it was not easy.
Then, Aileen was invited by a gallerist to propose a mural for a car wash with a large wall at the corner of West 24th Street and 10th Avenue in Chelsea, New York City’s gallery district. She and I worked on a proposal with a mock-up of the mural for the owner, but this didn’t happen neither.
The car wash building in the gallery district of New York City, for which we proposed a mural in 2014.
Aileen was invited by the NARS Foundation in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to curate a group show that would have included my works, but soon after, she was offered the job as associate curator at the Beach Museum of Art. I remember the moment when she told me about her new job. We were having lunch together near the Museum of Modern Art. I was excited for her new journey.
Aileen’s farewell party in 2015 at the Brooklyn Museum’s Art Off the Wall event, arranged by Sharon Matt Atkins, Director of Curatorial Affairs (fifth from the left). Other participants from left to right: New York artist Babs Reingold; New York artist Margaret Murphy; Curator Midori Yoshimoto, who introduced Aileen to me; my wife Shihori and I.
From August to October of 2015, I did a residency program at Chelsea College of Arts in London. Right after I returned to New York in November, I got an email from Aileen when I was in Strand Book Store near Union Square to find some nice second-hand books on New York Writing Culture. I noticed right away that this message is about something special. Aileen was talking about a possibility of my solo show at the Beach Museum of Art. Somehow, I had a good feeling that this time it was going to happen. After a while, she confirmed that the show was officially on the museum’s calendar.
Our productive conversation and a few trials of doing a project together over the past few years resulted in something really exciting. I deeply thank Aileen for giving such an amazing opportunity to a young artist like me and everyone at the Beach Museum for their effort and labor to make this exhibition happen.
The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art furthers the teaching, research, and service missions of Kansas State University by collecting, studying, caring for, and presenting the visual art of Kansas and the region.
Seeing Freedom? Livestream Conversation with Elisabeth Anker on the Diverse Meanings of Iconic Images and Objects
