Alexander Alberro. Right: Jesús Rafael Soto, Homenaje al humano, from the series, “An American Portrait, 1776-1976”, 1975.
Wood and aluminum, ed. 18/25. SBMA, Gift of Transworld Art. © 2021 Atelier Soto / DR
SANTA BARBARA — The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present Activating the Spectator by Reshaping the Aesthetic Field: Op, Kinetic, and Participatory Art at Mid-Century at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 31 at SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara.
Art historian Alexander Alberro explores the development of a research-based artistic practice that fused abstract art with mathematics, science, and technology in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The stated goal of the artists involved was to demystify the creative process in favor of an objective investigation of visual phenomena. Alberro addresses how and why these experiments evolved into a greater concern with the participation of art spectators.
Alexander Alberro is a professor of art history at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City. His writings have been published in a broad range of journals and exhibition catalogues, and he is the author ofConceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity (MIT, 2004) and Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-twentieth Century Latin American Art (Chicago, 2017). He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the Howard Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Currently, Professor Alberro is completing a book-length study of the newly-formed transnational web of individuals and institutions that has in the past three decades fundamentally changed the nature of contemporary art, exploring not only what has led to this complex transformation but also the impact it has had on the current conditions of artistic practice.
Free SBMA Members and Students/$5 Non-Members
Get tickets at tickets.sbma.net.
Please note: This event is in person at Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Mary Craig Auditorium. Visitors who plan to attend an event in SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium must show proof of being fully vaccinated with a booster (if eligible) OR, in some cases, supply a negative Covid-19 medical test result (taken within 72 hours prior to each event), along with an official photo ID, before entering the venue. All visitors must also follow SBMA’s mask policy and wear a mask while attending events in SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium.