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For the fifteenth episode of "Reading the Art World," host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Courtney J. Martin, co-author of “Cecily Brown," published by Phaidon. This 2020 book is the first major monograph about Cecily Brown, one of the most influential painters of our time. In it, Courtney offers an insightful interview with the artist, and co-authors Jason Rosenfeld and Francine Prose provide illuminating essays. Courtney J. Martin is the Paul Mellon Director of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. Previously, she was the Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Dia Art Foundation, she taught at Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley and worked at the Ford Foundation. She received a doctorate from Yale University. Courtney sits on the boards of the Chinati Foundation, the Center for Curatorial Leadership, Hauser & Wirth Institute and the Henry Moore Foundation. Cecily Brown is a British-born, New York-based artist who rose to prominence in the late 1990s. She established her unique voice within the art sphere by investigating the sensual qualities of oil paint and challenging the conventions of abstraction and figuration. Through a range of references to old master paintings, Abstract Expressionism, and popular culture, Brown's symbolic language, exuberant brushwork, rich palette, intense energy, and embrace of the erotic have redefined some of painting's historical canons."Reading the Art World" is a live interview and podcast series with leading art world authors hosted by art advisor Megan Fox Kelly. The conversations explore timely subjects in the world of art, design, architecture, artists and the art market, and are an opportunity to engage further with the minds behind these insightful new publications. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations. For more information, visit: meganfoxkelly.com. Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly.Purchase “Cecily Brown" by Courtney J. Martin at Phaidon. Music composed by Bob Golden.
The National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut were among the many arts institutions forced to close during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. How has this experience changed the running of these galleries and museums? Anne McElvoy talks to: Gabriele Finaldi - Director of the National Gallery in London, which filmed its Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition and then sold online passes to view the show. Courtney J. Martin - Paul Mellon Director, Yale Center for British Art. Daniel Weiss - President and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. You can find directors of museums and galleries in Singapore, Beijing, Paris, St Petersburg, Washington, Los Angeles, London and Dresden in previous Frieze/Free Thinking discussions. There's a playlist on the Free Thinking website called Visual Arts which also includes conversations about colour in art, slow looking, women's art, Black British art, the role of critics. Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Episode 55 features Courtney J. Martin. In 2019, she became the sixth director of the Yale Center for British Art. Previously, she was the deputy director and chief curator at the Dia Art Foundation; an assistant professor in the History of Art and Architecture department at Brown University; an assistant professor in the History of Art department at Vanderbilt University; a chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow in the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley; a fellow at the Getty Research Institute; and a Henry Moore Institute research fellow. She also worked in the media, arts, and culture unit of the Ford Foundation in New York. In 2015, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. In 2012, Martin curated the exhibition Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip . . . Frank Bowling’s Poured Paintings 1973–1978 at Tate Britain. In 2014, she co-curated the group show Minimal Baroque: Post-Minimalism and Contemporary Art at Rønnebæksholm in Denmark. From 2008 to 2015, she co-led a research project on the Anglo-American art critic Lawrence Alloway at the Getty Research Institute and was co-editor of Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator (Getty Publications, 2015, winner of the 2016 Historians of British Art Book Award). In 2015, she curated an exhibition at the Dia Art Foundation focusing on the American painter Robert Ryman. At Dia, she also oversaw exhibitions of works by Dan Flavin, Sam Gilliam, Blinky Palermo, Dorothea Rockburne, Keith Sonnier, and Andy Warhol. She was editor of the book Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art (Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2016), surveying an important collection of modern and contemporary work by artists of African descent. As a graduate student in 2007, Martin contributed to the Center’s exhibition and publication Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and his Worlds. She received a doctorate from Yale University for her research on twentieth-century British art and is the author of essays on Rasheed Araeen, Kader Attia, Rina Banerjee, Frank Bowling, Lara Favaretto, Leslie Hewitt, Asger Jorn, Wangechi Mutu, Ed Ruscha, and Yinka Shonibare CBE (RA). Yale News April 2019 https://news.yale.edu/2019/04/10/courtney-j-martin-09-phd-named-director-ycba The Art Newspaper September 2020 https://www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/yale-center-for-british-art-embraces-a-global-framework ARTnews April 2019 https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/yale-center-british-art-courtney-martin-director-12328/ culture type June 2019 https://www.culturetype.com/2019/06/20/courtney-j-martin-appointed-director-of-yale-center-for-british-art-an-opportunity-the-yale-alum-called-too-good-to-pass-up/ Dia Art February 2017 https://diaart.org/about/press/courtney-j-martin-to-join-dias-curatorial-department-as-deputy-director-and-chief-curator/type/text Courtney Martin image credit Angelis Apolinario
We teamed up with COS for this Clever Extra to celebrate the exquisite art of Dorothea Rockburne. Courtney J. Martin, Chief Curator of Dia Art Foundation, elaborates on Rockburne’s conceptual approaches and techniques while offering us a view of her curatorial methods in mounting a long-term exhibition of her work. Karin Gustafsson, Creative Director for COS, reveals how her admiration for Rockburne’s work - the lines, textures and simplicity of materials, inspired the direction of the current collection. Images and more from our guest! The Dorothea Rockburne installation will be on view at Dia:Beacon from May 2018 for the next 3-5 years so to keep up with it, follow @diaartfoundation and @cosstores on Instagram. You can watch a short film about the exhibit, featuring Dorothea Rockburne, at COSSTORES.COM Please say Hi on social! Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - @CleverPodcast, @amydevers, @designmilk If you enjoy Clever we could use your support! Please consider leaving a review, making a donation, becoming a sponsor, or introducing us to your friends! We love and appreciate you! Clever is created, hosted and produced by Amy Devers and Jaime Derringer, aka 2VDE Media, with music from El Ten Eleven and editing by Alex Perez. Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk.
Painter and Royal Academician Frank Bowling discusses his life and work with Mel Gooding (Art critic and author of the Royal Academy’s monograph on Frank Bowling) and Courtney J. Martin (Assistant Professor of History of Art & Architecture at Brown University and Specialist in 20th Century British Art).