Who's in town?
Lynn Gumpert

SALT Galata, Workshop II-III

University Museum as Lab: NYU’s Grey Art Gallery

Lynn Gumpert, director of Grey Art Gallery, will talk on the role of university art museums in the U.S. and how the institution works with faculty and students to present exhibitions and programs. Grey Art Gallery and New York University (NYU) are located in the very heart of one of the art world’s capitals, and face a special challenge of presenting shows that also make a contribution to the cultural life of their metropolitan area. Gumpert’s talk will introduce the museum, the Abby Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art as well as its holding of New York School work from the 1940s–1960s, and review three kinds of exhibitions: those related to the Grey and NYU Art Collections; shows that draw on NYU’s academic strengths and have innovative formats; and exhibitions that might otherwise not come to New York.

Lynn Gumpert has been Director of Grey Art Gallery, New York University’s fine-arts museum, since 1997. She has overseen more than 50 exhibitions at Grey including Modern Iranian Art: Selections from the Abby Weed Grey Collection at NYU (2013); Toxic Beauty: The Art of Frank Moore (2012); Soto: Paris and Beyond, 1950–1970 (2012); Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya (2009); The Poetics of Cloth: African Textiles / Recent Art (2008); The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 (2006); and Electrifying Art: Atsuko Tanaka, 1954–1968 (2004). Gumpert previously worked as a writer, consultant, and independent curator, organizing shows in New York, Japan, and France. From 1980 to 1988 she was curator and senior curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. She authored the first major monograph on French artist Christian Boltanski (Flammarion, 1992) and has contributed essays to numerous publications.

The talk will be held in English.