Left: Aruna D’Souza. Photo by Dana Hoey.
Right: David Platzker. Photo by Martin Seck.
The Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to welcome David Platzker and Aruna D'Souza for the 2019 Viewpoint Series. This program invites leading curators, critics and scholars of the contemporary art world for three separate visits to the UT Austin campus. Each visit lasts several days and is comprised of a public lecture and seminar, as well as private studio visits for current graduate students.
Lectures: Thursdays February 7, March 14, and April 25
Seminars: Fridays February 8, March 15, and April 26
David Platzker is the director of Specific Object, a curatorial project and bookstore that he founded in 2004 with a specialized inventory in Pop, Fluxus, Minimal, and Conceptual artists’ publications and artworks.
From 1998 to 2004 he was the Executive Director of the non-profit bookstore Printed Matter, where he organized numerous exhibitions and artists’ publications, increased and focused the programming and profile of the organization in addition to founding their annual book fair.
Most recently he was the Curator of Drawings and Prints, at The Museum of Modern Art, where he co-curated with Jon Hendricks, Consulting Fluxus Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints; There Will Never Be Silence: Scoring John Cage’s 4’33” (2014); Gilbert & George: The Early Years (2015); and with Connie Butler and Christophe Cherix, Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions at The Museum of Modern Art which is presently on view at the Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles under the title Concepts and Intuitions, 1965–2016.
Aruna D'Souza writes about modern and contemporary art; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; and how museums shape our views of each other and the world. Her work appears regularly in 4Columns.org, where she is a member of the editorial advisory board, and has been published as well in The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Art News, Garage, Bookforum, Momus, Art in America, and Art Practical, among other places. Her book, Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts was published by Badlands Unlimited in May 2018. She currently editing two forthcoming volumes, Making It Modern: A Linda Nochlin Reader, which will be published by Thames & Hudson, and A Presence Which Signals Absence: Lorraine O'Grady Collected Writings 1977-2018.