Art historian Alexander Alberro, who explores the development of a research-based artistic practice that fused abstract art with mathematics, science and technology in the late 1950s and early 1960s, will speak at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 31 in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s (SBMA) Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St.
The program is called Activating the Spectator by Reshaping the Aesthetic Field: Op, Kinetic, and Participatory Art at Mid-Century.
The stated goal of the artists involved was to demystify the creative process in favor of an objective investigation of visual phenomena. Alberro addresses how and why these experiments evolved into a greater concern with the participation of art spectators.
Alberro is a professor of art history at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. His writings have been published in a range of journals and exhibition catalogues. He is the author of “Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity” (MIT, 2004) and “Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-twentieth Century Latin American Art” (Chicago, 2017).
He has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Alberro is currently completing a book-length study of the newly-formed transnational web of individuals and institutions that has in the past three decades fundamentally changed the nature of contemporary art, exploring not only what has led to this complex transformation but also the impact it has had on the current conditions of artistic practice.
Entry to the event is free to SBMA members and students/$5 for non-members. Get tickets at tickets.sbma.net.
This event is in person. Visitors who plan to attend an event in Mary Craig Auditorium must show proof of being fully vaccinated with a booster (if eligible) or, in some cases, supply a negative COVID-19 medical test result (taken within 72 hours prior to each event), along with an official photo ID, before entering the venue.
All visitors must follow SBMA’s mask policy and wear a mask while attending events in SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium.