“Critics’ Dilemmas” a panel discussion at Rubin Museum of Art

May 23, 2011. A guided tour of the Rubin Museum of Art’s new exhibition, preceding our Annual Meeting. The exhibition on view “Quentin Roosevelt’s China: Ancestral Realms of the Naxi,” unites approximately 100 works of Naxi religious art primarily acquired in the early-to mid-20th century by Quentin Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, as well as by the botanist-explorer Joseph Rock. The Annual Meeting will be followed by the panel “Critics’ Dilemmas: Naughty, Nice, or just Plain Honest”. Participants include: Elisabeth Kley, Barbara MacAdam, Peter Plagens, and Walter Robinson. The panel of guests will discuss the current state of art and art criticism. AICA member and Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA, João Ribas will moderate the panel.

Photograph: © Peter Aaron/Esto

The Annual AICA meeting has been scheduled for 6 p.m. on May 23. It will take place at the Rubin Museum of Art located at 150 West 17th Street in New York City.

A guided tour of the Rubin Museum of Art’s new exhibition, scheduled from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m., will precede our Annual Meeting. The exhibition on view will be recently opened “Quentin Roosevelt’s China: Ancestral Realms of the Naxi,” which unites approximately 100 works of Naxi religious art primarily acquired in the early-to mid-20th century by Quentin Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, as well as by the botanist-explorer Joseph Rock. Pre-registration required: aicausaprogram@gmail.com (AICA members only).

The Annual Meeting will be followed by the panel “Critics’ Dilemmas: Naughty, Nice, or just Plain Honest”. Participants include: Elisabeth Kley, Barbara MacAdam, Peter Plagens, and Walter Robinson. The panel of guests will discuss the current state of art and art criticism. AICA member and Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA, João Ribas will moderate the panel. The event, which will start at 7 p.m., will be open to AICA members and their guests only. To RSVP for the panel, please contact: aicausaprogram@gmail.com

João Ribas is Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. He was previously Curator at the Drawing Center in New York, and his writing has appeared in numerous art and culture publications. His recent curated exhibitions include Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom (MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2011); Manon de Boer: Between Perception and Sensation (Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, 2011); FAX (Carpenter Center, Harvard, 2011); Frances Stark (MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2010). He is the winner of three consecutive AICA Awards for Best Exhibition in a Non-Profit Space (2008-2010) and of an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2010).

Elisabeth Kley has written features and reviews for PAJ (A Journal of Performance and Art), ARTnews, Art &
Auction, TimeOut NY, New York Press, Art in America, Eyemazing, Parkett, and online in
Artnet Magazine. She is also an artist who makes ceramics and drawings.

Barbara MacAdam is deputy editor of ARTnews, where she has worked for 22 years. She has also served as executive editor of Art + Auction, and was an editor at Review: Latin American Literature and Arts and New York magazine. She has written for other publications, such as the LA Times Book Review, Newsday, ID, and The New York Times Book Review, among others. She has also curated art exhibitions at nonprofit spaces.

Peter Plagens is a painter who’s shown with the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York since 1974, and was also the staff art critic for Newsweek (1989-2003). He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (painting), the National Endowment for the Arts (painting, art criticism), and the National Arts Journalism Program. Plagens is the author of two books of art criticism—Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast, 1945-70 and Moonlight Blues: An Artist’s Art Criticism—as well as a novel, Time for Robo. His online novel, The Art Critic, will be published as an e-book by Hol Art Books this year, and his book on the artist Bruce Nauman will be published by Phaidon, in 2012.