November 17: Robert Storr and Francesca Pietropaolo in Conversation
Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Robert Storr will discuss his new book, Writings on Art 1980–2005 (Heni Publishers, 2020), with Francesca Pietropaolo at 6pm ET on Tuesday, November 17.
The live event will stream directly on this page on Tuesday, November 17 at 6pm ET. There is no login or rsvp required. A recording will be posted shortly afterwards. During the broadcast, please email your questions to evan@192books.com.
Writings on Art 1980–2005 by Robert Storr. Edited and introduced by Francesca Pietropaolo. Published by Heni, 2020.
The first collection of essays by one of America’s most decisive and lucid critical voices.
Following on from the much-lauded Robert Storr: Interviews on Art, Heni presents the first in a two-volume publication, featuring the collected writings of Robert Storr, one of the world’s leading art critics and curators. Featuring the best of Storr’s criticism—reviews, articles and essays—from the 1980s to the mid-2000s, this publication includes texts on a wide range of artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Carroll Dunham, Eva Hesse, Ilya Kabakov, Martin Puryear, Louise Lawler, Bruce Nauman, Adrian Piper, Jackson Pollock, Chéri Samba, Nancy Spero, Yvonne Rainer and Rachel Whiteread (among many others). Writings on Art offers fresh insights on some of the most influential artists of our era and is a must-read for curators, students, artists, exhibition-goers, and all those interested in the art and culture of today.
Robert Storr is a curator, critic, and painter. He received a B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1972 and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978. He was curator and then senior curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York from 1990 to 2002, where he organized thematic exhibitions such as Dislocations and Modern Art Despite Modernism as well as mongraphic shows on Elizabeth Murray, Gerhard Richter, Max Beckmann, Tony Smith, and Robert Ryman. In addition, he coordinated the Projects series from 1990 to 2000, mounting exhibitions with Art Spiegelman, Ann Hamilton, and Franz West, among others. In 2002 he was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Mr. Storr has also taught at the CUNY Graduate Center and the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies as well as the Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, New York Studio School, and Harvard University, and has been a frequent lecturer in this country and abroad. He has been a contributing editor at Art in America since 1981 and writes frequently for Artforum, Parkett, Art Press (Paris), Frieze (London), and Corriere della Serra (Milan). He has also written numerous catalogs, articles, and books, including Philip Guston (Abbeville, 1986), Chuck Close (with Lisa Lyons, Rizzoli, 1987), and Intimate Geometries: The Work and Life of Louise Bourgeois (2016), and Philip Guston. A Life Spent Painting (2020). Among his many honors, he has received a Penny McCall Foundation Grant for painting, a Norton Family Foundation Curator Grant, and honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maine College of Art, as well as awards from the American Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, a special AICA award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism, an ICI Agnes Gund Curatorial Award, and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In 2000 the French Ministry of Culture presented him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and subsequently awarded him the status of Officier in the same order. From 2005 to 2007 he was visual arts director of the Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position. Mr. Storr was appointed Professor of Painting/printmaking and Dean of the School of Art in 2006 and was named the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean in 2014. Storr lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and New Haven, Connecticut.
Francesca Pietropaolo is an Italian-born art historian, curator, and critic based in Venice. Her research interests focus on postwar European and American art, and on international contemporary art. She has held curatorial positions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, Venice and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. During her time at MoMA, she worked on Roth Time: A Dieter Roth Retrospective (2004), Plane Image: A Brice Marden Retrospective (2006) and exhibitions drawing from the museum’s collection of works on paper. She was on the curatorial team of Greater New York 2005, MoMA/PS 1, New York. At the Fondation Luis Vuitton, she was in charge of artist commissions, notably a site-specific installation by Ellsworth Kelly for the Auditorium as well as works by Cerith Wyn Evans, Adrián Villar Rojas, and Taryn Simon. Her projects as independent curator include exhibitions such as North by New York: New Nordic Art (American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 2011) and Wrinkles in Time (IVAM, Valencia, 2009). In 2015 she cocurated the international film festival Fireflies in the Night at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), Athens as well as its second edition Fireflies in the Night Take Wing (2016). In 2017 she co-curated Only Connect!, an international program of performances, at the SNFCC, Athens presenting performances by Kim Jones, Mieskuoro Huutajat (Screaming Men’s Choir) and Tania Bruguera among others. In 2019 she co-curated the exhibition Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum, an official Collateral Event of the 2019 Venice Biennale, at Chiesa delle Penitenti, Venice. She is the editor of Ellsworth Kelly, first issue of “Les Cahiers de la Fondation,” (Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2014) realized in collaboration with the artist. She is the author of numerous essays in publications for, among others, MoMA, the Walker Art Center, Tate, Fondation François Pinault, Venice, and the Estorick Collection, London. As a critic, she has contributed to Flash Art International, ARTnews, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Press, and Arte e Critica.