"Dumbing Down or Smartening Up: How Museums Address Their Publics"
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass - Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art, will present the lecture "Dumbing Down or Smartening Up: How Museums Address Their Publics" on Thursday, October 30, at 7 pm. This free lecture will be held at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.More than ever museum programming and funding are influenced by educational mandates. How museums actually go about the task of informing the public about art, and how readily they recognize and anticipate different constituencies within that public, has become among the most vexed questions. Storr will consider which voice or voices museums might use to address the plurality of visitors. He will also discuss whether providing information about art is "explaining away" the viewing experience.
Storr was appointed Dean of the Yale School of Art in 2006. Previous to this, he was the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. In the spring of 2007 Storr directed the 2007 Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position. From 1990 to 2002 he was the curator in the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), stepping down as senior curator in 2002.
Professor Storr's accomplishments span the art world. He is a painter, an art historian and critic, and a prodigious writer about the theory and practice of Art. Storr has been the curator of many exhibitions at the MoMA and elsewhere, and the author of dozens of monographs and catalogues. He also organized a number of reinstallations of MoMA's permanent collection, covering such topics as abstraction and the modern grotesque. Storr received his BA from Swarthmore College in 1972 and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.
The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm (daily in July and August). Admission June 1 through October 31 is $12.50 for adults, free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. Admission is free November through May. For more information, call 413-458-2303 or visit www.clarkart.edu.
