What is the state of American art?
Lunder Institute @ invites institutions across the nation to critically examine American art, its history, its future, and its ongoing evolution. Launched in 2024, The Colby College Museum of Art’s Lunder Institute for American Art asks institutions to respond to the question of the state of American art by having internal conversations across departments and sharing what emerged from these through a public program.
This initiative offers space and time to institutions to consider, discuss, and innovatively respond to some of the pressing issues, opportunities, and challenges within the field of American art in relation to their own institution, collection, and location within the United States. Importantly, this work also fosters necessary dialogue within and between institutions.
Lunder Institute @ 2025
Lunder Institute @ The Broad
Unsettled Voices
Los Angeles, February 2, 2025
A newly commissioned music, visual, and spoken word performance that invites us to consider the meaning and importance of reconciliation, featuring Indigenous musical artists Lynn Daphne Rudolph and Lazaro Arvizu, Jr.
Drawing upon The Broad’s reforestation project, Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Joseph Beuys’s social sculptures in post-World War II Germany, Tongva educator and musician Lazaro Arvizu, Jr. (Los Angeles) and Khoi Khoi violist Lynn Daphne Rudolph (Johannesburg) will perform a new work that will bring us closer to the land and the practices of its original caretakers as they reveal how their creative practices empower them to reanimate their respective Indigenous cultures.
As part of the performance, followed by a more engaged discussion, Arvizu and Rudolph will invite the audience into a creative call-and-response and a dialogue that focuses on what reconciliation means today in Tovaangar—or what we now call Los Angeles. This work speaks to the practice and understanding of art making in Indigenous and Native cultures.
This Lunder Institute@ program is co-presented and co-commissioned by Lunder Institute and The Broad. Unsettled Voices continues The Broad’s partnership with the Lunder Institute, which will host its annual summer think tank series in 2025, centering performance art in American Art. One think tank will be curated by The Broad’s Director of Audience Engagement Edward Patuto. Unsettled Voices is also part of the Los Angeles residency of The Centre for The Less Good Idea hosted by The Broad, The Nimoy at CAP, UCLA, and The Wallis.
About Lunder Institute @
Practice and methodology are core interests to the Lunder Institute, and that interest extends beyond individuals—artists, scholars, curators, etc.—to institutional practices within the field of American art. As a think tank for the field, and part of a leading academic art museum, the Lunder Institute seeks to provide opportunities and resources for institutions to engage with questions related to American art. A primary goal of this initiative is to promote transparency in the field of American art, beyond public-facing exhibitions and scholarship, to extend that process across each organization, and share a product of that engagement with the public.
These convenings promote discourse in an open and fertile space leading toward innovation, new areas of exploration, and possible answers to questions that continue to arise around what American art is and what impacts its production, its scholarship, and its research.
Lunder Institute @ 2024
Lunder Institute @ the de Young Museum
Making America: On Creative Work and Liberatory Practice
San Francisco, February 10, 2024
Two conversations over the course of a weekend examine the state of American art through the lens of radical imagining and collective care in a pair of discussions featuring artists, curators, and interpretation specialists. Together, participants explore the responsibility of art workers in the face of censorship, the aftermath of the reversal of affirmative action, and ongoing assaults on education and freedom of expression. Moving beyond the buzzwords of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion, these conversations challenge both speakers and visitors to reassess the possibilities of creative work in shaping American life and discourse.
A conversation on interpreting American art
Specialists from the Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco Museum of and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco consider the role of art museum interpretation professionals in shaping the narrative of American art within the current socio-political climate.
A conversation on creativity + defiance in American art
American Artist, Diedrick Brackens, and Rashaad Newsome, with moderator by Devin Malone, director of public programs and community engagement at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, explore the role of the artist, producing creative work, and meaning-making in the face of threats to freedom of expression.
Lunder Institute @ The Broad
The Un-Private Collection: Sayre Gomez + Patrick Martinez + Lynell George
Los Angeles, March 2, 2024
Artists Sayre Gomez and Patrick Martinez, moderated by noted author and native Angelino Lynell George, discuss Los Angeles as a creative landscape and how their artworks are shaped by it. Gomez and Martinez’s paintings are emblematic of a new generation of artists using the visual language of Los Angeles as inspiration for their creative practice. Martinez’s paintings incorporate architectural elements to indicate and preserve identity and culture for the Latinx community as the landscape of the city changes. Gomez’s artworks portray the passage of time and urban decay that looms over the city through faded signage, as well as the neglected and vacant buildings he encounters. Lynell George is a Los Angeles-based journalist, essayist, and author, whose 2020 book A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler was a finalist for a Hugo Award.
Lunder Institute @ Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Bite Size Conversations
Bentonville, Arkansas, March 7, 2024
Crystal Bridges explores the pressing issues of American Art, how new directions in American art are reflected in their collection, and how multiple perspectives impact their new galleries in Bite-Size Conversations, a program that brings together art, food, and dialogue. These short conversations showcase the work and stories of artists Danielle Hatch, Linda Nguyen Lopez, and Kalyn Barnoski with conversation between each and a Crystal Bridges curator. Curators leading the program included: Alejo Benedetti, Curator of Contemporary Art; Jen Padgett, Windgate Curator of Craft; and Jordan Poorman Cocker, Curator of Indigenous Art.
Lunder Institute @ the Addison Gallery of American Art
Defining American Art: Then and Now Symposium
Andover, Massachusetts, April 7, 2024
The Addison’s founding history provides a snapshot into the state—and stakes—of American art in the 1920s and 30s. This symposium looks to the Addison’s own formation as a case study to track evolving notions of American art over the last century, with special attention to questions of citizenship and national identity as they inform the field today. The first panel takes up questions prompted by the Addison’s founding collection and terms of trust. In particular, the panel reflects on the specification that only works of art “produced by a native-born or naturalized citizen of the United States” can be acquired for the collection: What was the context of and intention behind this definition of American art? How was citizenship defined in this moment, and who was excluded? What exceptions were or have been made to this provision, and why? What is the relationship between nationality, national identity, and American art? The second panel explores issues around the definition of American art in our present moment. How have definitions of American art changed over the past century, and what factors have impacted that notion over time? Panelists probe the ethics, considerations, and ramifications of enfolding artists with traditionally marginalized cultural affiliations into a pre-existing American art canon.
Lunder Institute @ Museum of Fine Arts
New Discourses for Folk and Self-Taught Art
Boston, May 23, 2024
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston hosts an in-person, public symposium moderated by Michael J. Bramwell, Joyce Linde Curator of Folk and Self-taught art around the question: “What is the state of American Art?” The symposium promotes discourses around new understandings and reception of Folk and Self-Taught Art for the twenty-first century. Participants included Dr. Gabrielle A. Berlinger, professor of Folklore, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kinshasha H. Conwill, deputy director emerita, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Jori Finkel, New York Times art critic, and Lonnie B. Holley, American artist. The equitable integration of Folk and Self-taught into museums promotes cultural competency by reflecting appreciation of art and people from diverse backgrounds. This idea is central to progressive cultural practice and a socially equitable society. The symposium attempts to raise the profile and positive reception of Folk and Self-taught art, while expanding the MFA Boston’s institutional goal of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access.
Lunder Institute @ the Whitney Museum of American Art
Making Collections, Revealing Histories
New York City, September 13, 2024
Two conversations over the course of an afternoon reflect on the category of American art today through the lens of museum collecting and artistic practices. The conversations explore how exhibition making can propel new art historical narratives and how artists can inspire audiences to understand American art and history from different perspectives.
In Part 1, Whitney Curators Jennie Goldstein, Marcela Guerrero, and Rujeko Hockley discuss recent and upcoming exhibitions drawn from, and building upon, the Whitney’s collection. Mining themes of landscape, craft, and inheritance, these exhibitions have been part of an ongoing process of expanding the category of American art. The conversation is moderated by Megan Heuer, Director of Public Programs and Academic Engagement.
In Part 2, Artists Alan Michelson and Every Ocean Hughes, moderated by Kim Conaty, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, present their recent projects that engage with the Whitney’s current site at 99 Gansevoort Street and invite viewers to consider underknown histories embedded in both place and institution.
Lunder Institute @ the Colby College Museum of Art
The Gordon Center for Performing Arts at Colby College, October 29, 2024
The Lunder Institute @ series comes home to culminate its inaugural year and provide an opportunity for the Colby community to learn about this innovative program and how it serves as a vehicle to create conversation between art institutions across the country around the state of American art. Each of the six museums share what they have learned and taken away from being participants of this first Lunder Institute @ cohort.
