Edward Gorey at Harvard

September 1950 Registration Issue of the Harvard Advocate. It contains, among other things, two poems and one story by "Francis" Frank O'Hara. The cover illustration is by Edward Gorey. 

As part of my internship for the Department of  Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, I compiled a report of sorts on Edward Gorey's milieu during his studies at Harvard. The impetus for collecting this information was a bequest to the museum of a group of envelopes hand-drawn by Gorey and sent to his childhood friend Sylvia Sights, who was in Chicago while he was in Cambridge. A story by Julia Vodrey Hendrickson featuring the envelopes and an interview with AIC's Curator of Prints and Drawings Mark Pascale can be found here. A Flickr set of a few of the envelopes can be found here. After the jump is the piece I wrote about Gorey's time at Harvard.

Peter Doig Lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago

Peter Doig, Guest House 3, 2002. Part of the Prints and Drawings collection at AIC.

On May 3rd I saw Peter Doig deliver an outline of his artwork's development at the Art Institute of Chicago. I enjoyed it, so I am posting a recording of it. Besides streaming it above, you may download it here.

I found his demeanor agreeably low-key and his commentary thoughtful. I had been awake for 48 hours by the time his lecture in the darkened auditorium began - perhaps my memories of it aren't quite trustworthy. This is why I record things.

After the jump is a collection of flyers Doig has painted for StudioFilmClub, a weekly film series he hosts at his studio in Trinidad. The flyers are collected in the book Peter Doig: StudioFilmClub. I like them.

Gallery 219a: Goya's Tauromaquia Prints

One component of my internship for the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Art Institute of Chicago is to curate small selections of prints for the Allerton hallway spaces that serve as corridors for the main painting galleries.

There are a number of Allerton galleries to choose from, and each comes with its own subject matter. For instance, I curated gallery 219a, which is for Francisco de Goya, while my fellow intern Valerie Sullivan curated a gallery for 16th century Italian prints. Basically, I read about Goya for a few days in the Ryerson library, conceived of curatorial angles for each grouping, and then selected work for three rotations, one from each of Goya's main print series (The Art of Bullfighting, The Disasters of War, and The Caprices).

The first rotation, from Tauromaquia or The Art of Bullfighting, was recently installed - go see it. Below are images of the prints, their tombstones, and two 'chats' or wall texts I wrote for accompaniment.