Talk

Liz Glynn’s sculptural practice engages with issues of social ritual, class, and the dynamics between public and private space. Her work often features participatory performances employing historical narratives and modern materials to recreate and reinterpret objects and bygone environments that she has researched extensively. Within her practice, transformations serve to disrupt dominant historical tropes and invite audiences to question narratives framed around objects.

Glynn’s talk at The New School accompanies Public Art Fund’s upcoming exhibition Open House, the artist’s first large-scale public commission that draws inspiration from one of the grandest Fifth Avenue interior spaces designed by famed Gilded Age architect Stanford White: the now-demolished William C. Whitney Ballroom. Located at the southeast entrance to Central Park, Open House stands just eight blocks from the original mansion and transforms Doris C. Freedman Plaza into a ballroom, featuring cast cement sculptural interpretations of the interior’s opulent furniture. Sofas, chairs, footstools, and arches will adorn the 3,500-square-foot plaza, where the public will be invited to enjoy the artist’s contemporary re-imagination of a historically exclusive space as one that is accessible to all.

Open House will be on view March 1 – October 2017 in Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park.

Liz Glynn (b. 1981, Boston, MA) lives and works in Los Angeles, and recent solo shows and performances include The Myth of Singularity, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2015); PATHOS (The Blind Exercises), Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2015); Liz Glynn: Ransom Room, SculptureCenter, New York (2014); Black Box, as part of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time Performance Art and Public Art Festival, Los Angeles (2012); Loving You is Like _ _ _ _ _ the Dead, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2011) and The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project, Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin (2009). She has also been featured in group shows at the Barbican Art Gallery, London (2015); the Hammer Museum (2012); and the New Museum (2009). Glynn is the recipient of several awards, including a Creative Capital Foundation fellowship (2016), and the Center for Cultural Innovation’s Investing in Artists Grant (2012). Glynn received a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

The Public Art Fund Talks at The New School feature internationally-renowned artists who offer their insights into art and its personal, social, and cultural contexts. This joint initiative between Public Art Fund and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics conceives of New York City’s urban environment as a university campus, an artist’s studio, as well as an evolving commons. PAF’s commitment to art in the public realm and the VLC’s embrace of art as political expression encourage a dynamic platform for artists to reflect on their practice and to offer a new understanding about the changing nature of public space today.

Public Art Fund Talks at The New School are organized by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.

This program is made possible in part by Con Edison and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.