2nd Floor Flex Space, 205 Hudson Street (at Canal St.)
New York, NY 10013
A presentation on the state of arts academia from the Bay Area and beyond followed by a discussion with Sara Greenberger Rafferty
Please RSVP HERE
On the occasion of the second printing of What? Is? Art?, by Lindsey White and Anonymous, The Hunter College Art Galleries are pleased to present a presentation, conversation, and book launch with San Francisco-based artist and educator Lindsey White. White will be joined in conversation by Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Professor of Art and Ruth Stanton Chair, Hunter College Department of Art and Art History.
What? Is? Art? (Colpa Press, 2024) is a collection of photographs made on the pandemic-empty campus of the San Francisco Art Institute, where White taught for over a decade as an Adjunct, Assistant, and Associate Professor and Photography Department Chair. The final class of SFAI art students graduated in the summer of 2022 and the institution promptly closed. SFAI was one of the last exclusively fine arts schools in the United States, and its closure reflects not only the transitional moment such schools face, but also their fight for survival. What? Is? Art? also includes writings by nine professors who teach in private art schools or public art departments across the country. The texts and images memorialize and contemplate the complexity of arts education in this protracted moment of instability while cementing the importance of building collective support systems within institutions.
About the Artist
Lindsey White is an artist living and working in San Francisco, CA. She has exhibited at venues such as SFMOMA; San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen; Bolinas Museum, CA; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; ACME, Los Angeles; White Columns, New York; The Art Gym at Marylhurst University, Oregon; Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL; Locust Projects, Miami; San Francisco International Airport Museum; and Museum Bärengasse, Zurich.
White taught in the Photography Department at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2010, serving as Department Chair from 2015 to 2022, before serving as Director of Contemporary Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. White was a co-founder of the para-curatorial experiment Will Brown, which realized projects with institutions such as U.C. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; di Rosa, Napa; Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University; and KADIST, San Francisco. White’s projects have been featured in the New York Times, Frieze, Art Forum, The New Yorker, KQED Arts, SF Chronicle, and Contemporary Art Daily.