The Phillips Collection
Center for the Study of Modern Art

The Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art is an interdisciplinary forum for scholarly discussion, research, and publication on modern art. Through Illinois at the Phillips, a collaboration of the museum and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Center offers lectures, seminars, and studio classes taught by University of Illinois faculty, practicing artists, and the museum’s professional staff. Courses are open to area university students, University of Illinois students, and the public and may be taken on a credit or non-credit basis.

Center programs include Conversations with Artists; the Duncan Phillips Lectures; Lecture Series; an annual Phillips Book Prize to assist with publication of a first book by a recent PhD; symposia; post-doctoral fellowships; and informal discussions and presentations on modern and contemporary art.

Conversations with Artists 2007–2008
Artistic Partnerships

Wednesday, February 27, 5:30 pm · Elizabeth Diller / Diller Scofidio and Renfro
The activities of New York architects Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro encompass architecture, urban design, and visual and performing arts. Among the firm’s best-known projects is the dramatic Blur Building, a media pavilion on Lake Neuchâtel, with a cloud canopy of lake water hovering above it (2002). Recent projects include the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2006); and Facsimile, a permanent media installation at the new Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco (2004). Diller and Scofidio, who founded their firm in 1979, were the first architects to receive the MacArthur Foundation “genius award” (1999). Renfro became a partner in 2004.

Wednesday, March 26, 5:30 pm · Andrea Robbins and Max Becher
Andrea Robbins and Max Becher focus on what they call “the transportation of place,” manifestations of the impact of far-flung communities on one another. Examples of the kind of influences and dislocations that intrigue them include German architecture in Africa; Germans dressing as Native Americans; Bavarian-style towns in the United States; American-style buildings in Cuba. Robbins and Becher investigate these cross-cultural interactions through photography, film, video, and digital media. Their work has been exhibited at the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rovereto, Italy; Gana Art Center, Seoul, South Korea; the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago.

Wednesday, April 30, 5:30 pm · Shelf Life: The Bookworks of Buzz Spector
In his art, Buzz Spector makes frequent use of the book, both as subject and object, as he investigates the interrelationships of history, memory, and perception. Spector’s most recent installation project featured a book structure composed entirely of volumes written by Cornell faculty, staff, and students.

These programs take place at the Center, located in the Carriage House behind the museum. Free; registration required: kstilwill@phillipscollection.org or 202-387-2151 x286

Center programs are supported by a generous grant from
The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston.

2008 Lecture Series


Issues in Contemporary Architecture
Four lectures by Thomas Kamm, AIA, Washington based architect and professor of architecture at the University of Illinois

Wednesday, January 23
5:30 pm
Museum Architecture
As art museums play an increasingly important role in urban areas, what does their design communicate to audiences and artists? Are museums best conceived as neutral frames for art, or as passionate advocates and social critics? Are art and the museum that house it in danger of becoming mass-market commodities? Kamm explores these questions and others arising out of contemporary museum design.

Wednesday, March 19
5:30 pm
Transparency in Architecture
The development of new technologies, coupled with a desire for openness, led to the innovative use of glass in buildings and the unprecedented evolution of transparency in architecture in the last century. Kamm examines the legacy of this trend in new structures today.

Wednesday, April 16
5:30 pm
Performance and Architecture
Our kinetic sense is at the heart of our experience of the performing arts and architecture, and we experience both over time and through movement. Kamm looks at connections between contemporary performance and architecture.

Wednesday, May 7
5:30 pm
Sustainable Architecture
In the last of four lectures, Thomas Kamm, architect and professor of architecture
at the University of Illinois, examines the ways in which architects have turned to
traditional building strategies, as well as new technologies, to minimize the
ecological impact of new buildings.

Lectures take place at the Center.
Free; registration required: kstilwill@phillipscollection.org or 202-387-2151 x286

Symposia

The two sessions of this symposium are an effort to rethink the way we program, teach in, and direct museums of modern and contemporary art. 

September 15, 2007
Issues of Content: Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art Today
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Leading scholars from the United States, Spain, and Brazil join in discourse with directors of four American art museums to examine issues in museums’ choices of art, space, and public stance.  Questions to be addressed include how to deal with the discursive, often political, content of art and the challenges of respecting both the artist’s intent and the museum’s audiences.
Participants include Bruce Altshuler, New York University; Neal Benezra, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Manuel Borja-Villel, Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Jay Gates, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Kathy Halbreich, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Lisa Phillips, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and Suely Rolnik, Psychoanalyst, cultural critic and curator, São Paulo.

April, 26, 2008
Issues of Pedagogy: Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art Today
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“Issues of Pedagogy: Contemporary and Modern Art Museums Today,” focuses on how public engagement with modern and contemporary art is affected by the interventions of individuals with greater knowledge about art. Should these interventions take place at all?  Can they teach or help individuals to look more rigorously at the world, increase their pleasure in the objects, socialize people, and if so, do they conventionalize people or nurture their creativity?  By presenting “experts” in this context, do we perpetuate a hierarchy that disempowers the viewer, whether adult or child?  Or do we heighten the viewer’s intellectual independence and deepen his or her understanding through a directed dialogue framed by accepted “knowledge” about art objects? 

The day’s speakers include French philosopher Jacques Rancière; Howard Singerman, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Adam Lerner, The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar, Lakewood, Colorado; and other experts in art and museum education.

The papers presented at both sessions will be available as a book, Issues of Content and Pedagogy: Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art Today, to be published by the University of California Press under the imprimatur of The Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art and Illinois at the Phillips.

Click here for more information.