RAM Talks Art: Art Talks lectures continue March 13

By Elizabeth Dailing, Education Director, Rockford Art Museum

If you're looking to learn something new about art—think about attending lectures around town. In the next two months, there are three lecture opportunities here at Rockford Art Museum (RAM) alone!

Even if you never wanted to go back to school, lectures provide a great opportunity for exposure to something new or to further information about a subject of interest.

Friday, March 13, at noon, here at RAM, Women's Art Board is hosting the second of a three-part lecture series, Art Talks.

The March lecture will be given by Chicago gallery owner Martha Schneider and will discuss the work of contemporary photographers RES and Constanza Piaggio, as seen in Visages: Face Revised. Schneider Gallery recently showed some of this work in their exhibition In Focus: Argentina. The work then traveled to Rockford Art Museum for display in our current exhibition.

Whether your interest is in photography, art galleries, or collecting, this lecture should provide a second-person account of this body of work. For $10, you could learn something over your lunch hour that you didn't know that morning!

Later in March, Nels Akerlund will be lecturing at RAM on his American People Project. Founder of Rockford-based Nels Akerlund Photography, his work is described as “gorgeous and thoughtful” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and has been published in nine books and in publications worldwide. He has worked on assignments in each of the 50 states, and in 20 countries across four continents.

Akerlund started his career as an intern for a Washington, D.C., photographer working at the White House during the Reagan administration in 1985. Since then, he has photographed world leaders, rock legends, politicians, and icons of this generation, including the Dalai Lama and President Barack Obama. Now 38, Nels has been shooting for more than two decades.

Nels' new personal project has involved establishing a non-profit organization, the American People Project. Under this organization, Nels Akerlund Photography is attempting to shoot the largest archive of images of Americans. From celebrities to the unknown, this collection, in the end, will be given to an organization like the Smithsonian, most likely to their portrait galleries.

So, if you're looking for some inspiration from a local, come hear Nels talk Tuesday, March 24, at 6 p.m., at RAM—for free.

And, to take us into April, the final lecture in the Art Talks series be Friday, April 17, at noon in the theater inside Riverfront Museum Park (RMP), the building that houses RAM.

This lecture, “Chasing the Whale: Artists and Moby-Dick” takes place on the very day that RAM's next exhibition, Moby Dick: Heart of the Sea, opens and features Robert K. Wallace. So, if you want to hear from a leading researcher about artists and their connection to the Melville novel, now's your chance…at noon…in the RMP Theater, for just $10.

So, as far as lectures go, you should be up to date. And, if it's art lectures that you're longing for, mark your calendars for March 13, March 24, and April 17. Hope to see you at RAM soon.

For questions about upcoming events or attending any of the above lectures, please contact Rockford Art Museum at (815) 968-2787.

Contact RAM Education Director Elizabeth Dailing at edailing@rockfordartmuseum.org.

From the March 11-17, 2009 issue

Copyright 2002-2009 The Rock River Times

 

 

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