Tuesday, March 21 - The Milk of Dreams: Curating Contemporary Art in the Face of a Pandemic
This lecture explores last year’s Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams with a view toward understanding how the pandemic affected both the process and product of mounting the latest edition of this large-scale, contemporary art exhibition. Organized by New York-based Italian curator Cecilia Alemani, the two-part show, titled after a book by surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, focused on themes ranging from the body and transformation to the unconscious and desire. By exploring surrealism, past and present, through a combination of works by mostly women and non-binary artists, the show juxtaposed dreams and nightmares as a way of reflecting on and moving forward from this fraught moment in history while taking stock of social injustices and other dystopian themes along the way.
