Proximate Objects: Large Contemporary Artworks and Their Territorial Claims

Carnegie Museum of Art and the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh are pleased to welcome Dr. Malik Gaines for the the 2023 Annual Terry Smith Lecture in Contemporary Art. Proximate Objects: Large Contemporary Artworks and Their Territorial Claims draws on Gaines’s writing for an upcoming book that studies monumental-scale artworks and situates their historical and political effects. Recent works by artists including David Hammons, Simone Leigh, and Pope.L have appeared beyond the confines of disciplinary art space and take up the social dynamics of “the public,” offering ambivalent critiques of power and its projection.

Before the lecture beings, please join us at 4 p.m. for a light reception at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium.

The Annual Terry Smith Lecture in Contemporary Art is established to honor the namesake emeritus professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Museum of Art advisory board member and aims to advance the critical mission of art history to generate a healthy discourse in the contemporary moment. The lecture series invites a prominent scholar in the field of contemporary art to deliver a public lecture and lead closed-door seminars with the curators of Carnegie Museum of Art and the faculty and graduate students at the university.

About the Speaker

Dr. Malik Gaines has written articles and essays about art and performance in journals, periodicals such as Artforum, and for museum books and artist monographs published by MoMA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and many others. His book Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left (2017) followed routes of radical political ideas through performances of the 1960s. He is working on a second book dealing with contemporary art performances that act against the limits of US sovereignty. Gaines has performed and exhibited extensively with several collaborations including the group My Barbarian, whose 2021 survey exhibition and performance series toured from the Whitney Museum in New York to the ICA Los Angeles. He is co-artistic director of The Industry opera company, where his opera Star Choir premieres in fall 2023. Gaines holds a PhD in Performance Studies from UCLA, an MFA in Writing from CalArts, and a BA in History from UCLA. He is an associate professor of Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego.