Mass MoCA Curator Lectures at SUNY New Paltz

NEW PALTZ — Nato Thompson, assistant curator at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts (Mass MoCA) has been invited by the SUNY New Paltz Student Art Alliance to present a lecture at the college on at 7:30 p.m. on October 1 in Lecture Center 102. Mass MoCA, located in North Adams, is the largest center for contemporary arts in the United States. The institution is dedicated to the creation and presentation of provocative visual and performing arts pieces, and of works that blur conventional distinctions between artistic disciplines.

Thompson will discuss his upcoming exhibit, “Tactical Interventions,” an ambitious exhibition investigating the current trend of socially engaged political arts of the 1990’s and today. Some artists to be included in the exhibition and in his lecture are Kryzystof Wodiczko, filmmaker Michael Moore, the Guerrilla Girls and the Institute for Applied Autonomy. “These artists strategically manipulate the rules of aesthetics to address a wide variety of topics in the outside world. From education to urban intervention to modes of transportation, this exhibition not only points to recent innovations in art practice, it also contests the boundaries of aesthetic practice itself. Alternative bus tours, augmented leaf blowers for immigrant workers and high fashion clothing for civil disobedience are some of the projects that will be displayed in this expansive survey exhibition,” says Thompson.

Thompson recently curated the exhibition “Fantastic” where works by Gregory Crewdson, Miguel Calderon, Nils Norman, Alicia Framis, and Temporary Services with Angelo were represented. In this exhibition, alien lights, levitating hippies and utopian schemes teeter in the fantastic moment, engaging us to linger there with them on the precipitous cusp of possibility.

Thompson will present his lecture on Wednesday, October 1 at 7:30 p.m. in Lecture Center 102. It is free and open to all. The Art Lecture Series is a project of the Student Art Alliance, a funded member of the SUNY New Paltz Student Association. Additional information about this and other events in the School of Fine and Performing Arts is available on the Web at www.newpaltz.edu/artsnews, or call 845-257-3872.

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