An illustrated talk by Karen Wilkin, New York-based independent curator and critic specializing in 20th century modernism.

This program is offered in conjunction with the special exhibition The Importance of Place: A Sketchbook of Drawings by Stuart Davis, on display at the Museum through February 1, 2015.

Stuart Davis (1892-1964) is renowned as a colorist and acclaimed as an American pioneer of abstraction. This talk examines the importance of what Davis called “a configuration” – a drawn response to specific perceptions – to the evolution of his art. $10 Museum members, $20 nonmembers. Reservations required.

Karen Wilkin is a New York-based independent curator and critic specializing in 20th century modernism. Educated at Barnard College and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, to Rome. From 1971 through 1978, she was Chief Curator of the Edmonton Art Gallery, now the Art Gallery of Alberta. She is the author of monographs on Stuart Davis, David Smith, Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Giorgio Morandi and Hans Hofmann, and has organized and contributed to exhibitions of the work of these artists, among others, internationally. These include Stuart Davis: American Painter at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Stuart Davis: a Retrospective at the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, Venice, and the Stedlijk, Amsterdam, as well as, with Louis Kachur, the touring exhibition The Amazing Continuity: The Drawings of Stuart Davis.