Bonnard’s Influence on Art Today
Join us for a conversation with acclaimed artists Jennifer Packer and Taha Heydari about Pierre Bonnard and his enduring influence on modern and contemporary art. Moderated by Elsa Smithgall, co-curator of Bonnard’s Worlds.
About Jennifer Packer
Born in 1984 in Philadelphia, Jennifer Packer received her BFA from the Tyler University School of Art at Temple University in 2007, and her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. She was the 2012-13 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014-16. Her work was most recently featured in two major solo exhibitions: Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, the largest survey of Packer’s work to date, presented at Serpentine Galleries, London (202o) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2021-22), and Jennifer Packer: Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2021-22), her first exhibition on the west coast. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Tenderheaded, was shown at the Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL (fall 2017) and the Rose Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (spring 2018). Her work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and P.5-Prospect New Orleans (2021). Packer currently lives and works in New York, and is Associate Professor of Painting at RISD.
About Taha Heydari
Born in 1986 in Tehran, Iran, Taha Heydari received his BFA from the Art University of Tehran in 2010 and an MFA from the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute of College of Art in 2016. Heydari’s paintings have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Haines Gallery in San Francisco, CA; Ethan Cohen Fine Arts in New York, NY; Gavlak Gallery in Palm Beach, FL; and Ab-Anbar Gallery in Tehran, Iran. He received his first solo museum show at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, in 2016. His work has also appeared in group exhibitions in New York, Amsterdam, London, Dubai, Berlin, and Antwerp, including museum exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
IMAGE: Photos of Jennifer Packer and Taha Heydari