Artist Dorothea Rockburne in Conversation [CANCELED]

Due to Harvard University’s recent on-campus meeting and event guidance around Coronavirus (COVID-19), this event has been canceled. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Artist Dorothea Rockburne will discuss her artistic practice with Joachim Homann, the Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings at the Harvard Art Museums, and Jennifer Taback, professor of mathematics at Bowdoin College.

Taking her own work as well as drawings by Jacopo da Pontormo and others from the Harvard Art Museums collections as a point of departure, Rockburne makes the case for drawing as a form of intellectual inquiry. In conversation, she will reflect on her long experience with the manipulation of artistic materials, her fascination with mathematical thinking, and the Western art historical tradition.

Born in Montreal Canada, Rockburne first attended classes at the École des beaux-arts in Montreal and the Montreal Museum School of Fine Arts and Design before enrolling at the now legendary Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina. Among her most influential teachers there was mathematician Max Dehn, who introduced his students to mathematical thinking by relating it to nature, often teaching classes in the woods surrounding the school. Rockburne then moved to New York and has been exhibiting her work, most notably in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and internationally, since 1970. Dia:Beacon is currently presenting a long-term installation of her works from the early 1970s through the early 1980s.

The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway. Doors will open at 5:30pm.

Free admission, but seating is limited. Tickets will be distributed beginning at 5:30pm at the Broadway entrance. One ticket per person.

Complimentary parking available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.

Support for the lecture is provided by the M. Victor Leventritt Fund, which was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and Greater Boston communities.

In addition, modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.