April 26th: Yve-Alain Bois in Conversation with Leah Dickerman

Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Yve-Alain Bois will discuss his new book An Oblique Autobiography with Leah Dickerman.

This event will take place live at 192 Books at 192 10th Avenue, between 21st and 22nd street, on Wednesday, April 26th at 7 PM ET. Seating is on a first come, first serve basis. The event will also livestream directly on this page. There is no login or rsvp required. A recording will be archived and posted shortly afterwards.

Yve-Alain Bois — An Oblique Autobiography, edited by Jordan Kantor (Published by no place press, 2022)

An Oblique Autobiography assembles essays and reminiscences by art historian Yve-Alain Bois, tracing a personal itinerary through an era in which his discipline was significantly reformulated by new methodologies. Spanning more than four decades of Bois’s work as a scholar, journal editor, and occasional curator, these essays detail his early relationships with figures such as Lygia Clark, Roland Barthes, and Hubert Damisch, as well as his extended engagements with Rosalind Krauss and Ellsworth Kelly. With texts that range from academic journal articles to obituaries, written from 1976 to 2022, An Oblique Autobiography charts the range of Bois’s authorial voice and commitments, and, in the process, offers an intellectual self-portrait.

Yve-Alain Bois is Professor of Art History Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which he joined in 2005. He taught for eight years at Johns Hopkins University before becoming the Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard in 1991. He has written extensively on 20th-century art, from Matisse, Picasso and Mondrian to post-war European and American art. He has curated or co-curated several exhibitions, notably of the artists just mentioned as well as L’informe, mode d’emploi with Rosalind Krauss at the Centre Georges Pompidou and Ellsworth Kelly: Early Drawings at the Fogg Art Museum. Among other projects, he is currently working on the catalogue raisonné of Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and sculpture.

Leah Dickerman is Director of Research Programs at the Museum of Modern Art. From 2017 to 2021, Dickerman was the Director of Editorial and Content Strategy and co-head of the Creative Team at MoMA. She also had a long curatorial career in MoMA’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, and previously at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, organizing exhibitions that offer new perspectives on modern art, including Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends; One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North; Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art; and Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity. She has served on the editorial board of the journal October since 2001.