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Tue, Oct 20, 2015
This year's Lambert Family Lecture at the Wexner Center will feature a conversation between Diana Widmaier Picasso, cocurator of the major new exhibition Picasso.mania (and the artist’s granddaughter) and Dr. Jack Cowart, executive director of The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. The event is being held in conjunction with After Picasso: 80 Contemporary Artists now on view at the Wexner Center and featuring nearly 150 works by 80 artists, including Lichtenstein—all exploring and/or reflecting Picasso’s rich legacy. The Lambert Family Lecture takes place in Mershon Auditorium on Friday, November 13, at 5:30 pm. It is free, unticketed, and open to the public. It will be livestreamed at http://www.wexarts.org/live.
Just as last year's Transfigurations exhibition at the Wexner Center (featuring 19 exceptional works by Picasso) coincided with major presentations of Picasso's work at museums in New York and Paris, this fall's Wex show After Picasso: 80 Contemporary Artists shares thematic focus with Picasso.mania, a sweeping exhibition inaugurated earlier this month at the Grand Palais in Paris. Providing yet further connection, Widmaier Picasso also contributed an essay to the Wexner Center's Transfigurations catalogue last year.
Notes Wexner Center Director Sherri Geldin, "We're delighted to bring these two experts together for what promises to be a fascinating dialogue. Having just cocurated Picasso.mania, Diana will surely have fresh insights to share about the persistence of the master's impact upon artists who followed. And Jack, fully versed in Roy Lichtenstein's entire career, can surely reflect on the numerous references in Roy's work to Picasso's revolutionary practice. That Lichtenstein is an alum of The Ohio State University and even taught here very early in his career, makes this the perfect venue for such a discussion."
Widmaier Picasso is a French art historian who lives in New York and Paris. She is the co-curator of Picasso.mania, an exhibition now on view in Paris at the Grand Palais that, akin to After Picasso at the Wex, surveys the master's persistent and widespread legacy. Her other current projects include a catalogue raisonné of the sculptures of Pablo Picasso and the forthcoming book Pablo Picasso and the Craftsmanship in Vallauris in the 1950s. The granddaughter of Pablo Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter, she curated the acclaimed exhibition Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L'amour fou with John Richardson at the Gagosian Gallery in 2011. Ms. Picasso has master’s degrees in private law (Paris-Assas University) and art history (Paris-Sorbonne University). She contributed an essay on Pablo Picasso and his American collectors to the catalogue for last fall's Wexner Center exhibition Transfigurations: Modern Masters from the Wexner Family Collection.
Cowart is the founding executive director of The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, which among other activities oversees Lichtenstein's archives and the creation of a comprehensive catalogue raisonné of the artist's work. A distinguished art historian with special expertise on Lichtenstein and Henri Matisse, Cowart was previously deputy director and chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (1992–1999); head of the Department of 20th Century Art at the National Gallery of Art (1983–1992); and held curatorial positions at the St. Louis Art Museum and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT. He received his Ph.D. in the history of art from Johns Hopkins University in 1972. In 2001, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication awarded him a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
The annual Lambert Family Lecture is made possible by generous support from the Lambert Family Lecture Series Endowment Fund, which promotes dialogue about global issues in art and contemporary culture.
Free and low-cost programs at the Wexner Center are presented with support from Huntington Bank and Cardinal Health Foundation.
The Wexner Center receives general operating support from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. Generous support is also provided by the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation and Wexner Center members.
