CLARK ART INSTITUTE RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC PROGRAM FELLOW PRESENTS LECTURE ON THE EXHIBITION “CURATING ‘JERUSALEM ACTUAL AND POSSIBLE’”

For Immediate Release
October 31, 2019

Williamstown, Massachusetts—On Tuesday, November 12, at 5:30 pm, Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Beirut Kirsten Scheid presents “Curating ‘Jerusalem Actual and Possible’: Political Lessons from a non-Euclidean City.” The lecture will be held in the Clark’s auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center, and is free and open to the public.
Scheid’s lecture examines an exhibition she co-curated in 2018 in Jerusalem that was treated not as a representation but as a process-space where participants could analyze the bundling of their lives into incomplete concepts, such as “Palestinian” or “Israeli Arab,” or artificially exclusive ideologies, such as “binationalist coexistence” or “nationalist resistance.”

Scheid studies imagination technologies, artistic materialities, and social change specifically through cases of modern and contemporary Arab art. Her essays appear in Anthropology Now, ARTMargins, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Museum Anthropology. She has co-curated “The Jerusalem Show” (Jerusalem, 2018) and “The Arab Nude” (Beirut, 2016) and has exhibited at the New Museum (2011) and consulted for the Tate Modern (2014) and the Museum of Modern Art (2016–8). While the Clark/Oakley fellow, Scheid will complete an historically informed ethnography of aesthetic encounters that comprise contemporary Palestine and point to new political imaginings.

The next lecture in this series is Manton Fellow Jiat-Hwee Chang’s “The (Trans)formation of Air-conditioning Complexes: Architectural Histories and Futures from Asia” on Tuesday, December 3, at 5:30 pm.

ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library, consisting of more than 275,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

The Clark, which has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide, is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm; open daily in July and August. Admission is $20; free year-round for Clark members, children 18 and younger, and students with valid ID. Free admission is available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; EBT Card to Culture; and Blue Star Museums. For more information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.

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