Past Events

A virtual conversation November 17, 2022 The WPI hosted Special Agent Christopher McKeogh from the Art Crime division of the FBI. SA McKeogh gave a presentation on some of the notable cases he’s seen in recent times, what to look out for, and what art world experts can do to fight back against these fraudulent activities.

A virtual conversation Frank Stewart and Chester Higgins, Jr. November 9, 2022 at 6:30 pm ET In celebration of the launch of the Romare Bearden Papers on the Digital Archives, the WPI hosted a webinar featuring renowned photographers Frank Stewart and Chester Higgins, Jr., in a conversation moderated by Dalila Scruggs, Curator of Photography and Prints at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

A Pop Places webinar October 11, 2022 Leo Castelli established his gallery’s direction when it opened in the late 1950s by exhibiting the work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. Their art marked a shift away from the prevailing mode of abstract expressionism by employing objects and signs from the everyday environment, popular culture, and the mass media. By the mid-1960s the Castelli Gallery was considered among the most influential “Pop Places,” exhibiting works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist along with that of Johns and Rauschenberg. Bernstein, who frequented the Castelli gallery after arriving in New York in 1966 as an art history graduate student examines the origins of the galley as center for the various directions of Pop, including her personal experiences.

A Pop Places webinar October 4, 2022 Richard (Dick) Bellamy opened the Green Gallery on West 57th street in Fall 1960. The gallery’s first eighteen months experienced paltry sales. However, with the explosive arrival of Pop art in America, the gallery became a go-to-source for the “new” art. Tom Wesselmann’s gallery debut featured his Great American Nude and Still Life paintings that were swiftly snatched up by committed collectors as they vied for the artist’s latest artworks. This webinar draws on the author’s research for the forthcoming monograph devoted to the stylistic development and reception of Wesselmann’s most famous body of work, the Great American Nude series (1961–1969/73).

A Pop Places webinar September 27, 2022 In the early 1960s, James Rosenquist was in all the right places. His first Pop art canvases were made at a studio on Coenties Slip, his first show at Green Gallery sold out in 1962, and Rosenquist was included in all the earliest Pop art shows in NYC and beyond. In 1964–65, energy was building around his latest and largest work to date, F-111.

A Pop Places webinar September 20, 2022 Melissa Rachleff’s presentation explores Pop Art’s origins in assemblage and figuration. In “Pop Art’s Roots: Three Experimental Places,” Rachleff discusses these short-lived galleries where the “Pop” sensibility emerged: Hansa Gallery (1952–1959), Reuben Gallery (1959–1961) and Green Gallery (1960–1965).

Pop Places 1958–1966 Weekly Webinar Series September 20 to October 11, 2022 Pop Places 1958–1966 was a series of mid-day talks, dedicated to a different key New York exhibition space of the era. The series’ overarching thesis is that what became known as Pop emerged from an array of sites, where artists, gallerists and critics collectively worked through and developed the forms, ideas and challenges that would later become identified with the movement. Pop did not simply burst forth simultaneously from the individual minds of a few artists (e.g. Wesselmann, Oldenburg, Lichtenstein, Warhol), and cannot be understood outside of the exhibition spaces that made it possible. These talks will focus on the downtown New York scene, while making connections to other important early Pop sites around the country and the world.

Connoisseurship and Methodology webinar at the Appraisers Association of America May 25, 2022 Elizabeth Gorayeb, Executive Director of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, joined The Appraisers Association of America for a virtual webinar to speak on the WPI’s mission, history and the fundamental components of our research and publication initiatives, including digital cataloguing and archive platform. 

Preserving Photographic Glass Plates:  Conservation and Access in the Digital Age Panel at ARLIS/NA April 6, 2022 “Preserving Photographic Glass Plates: Conservation and Access in the Digital Age” brought together an interdisciplinary panel of conservators, historians, and archivists who presented their own preservation and public access strategies and discuss the relevance of these materials to their distinct fields of study.