Guggenheim Presents Spring Public Programs for Haunted

By using dated, passé, or quasi-extinct stylistic devices, subject matter, and technologies, much contemporary photography and video embodies a melancholic longing for an otherwise unrecuperable past. Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, on view from March 26 through September 6, documents this obsession, examining myriad ways photographic imagery is incorporated into recent practice, and in the process underscores the unique power of reproductive media.

LECTURES
The Elaine Terner Cooper Education Fund: Conversations with Contemporary Artists
Select artists featured in Haunted discuss the themes of their work. Curators introduce the programs and receptions, including an exhibition viewing, with the artists follow.

Luis Jacob
Tuesday, April 13, 6:30 pm
Like his predecessors Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and the artists of the Pictures generation, Luis Jacob (b. 1971, Lima, Peru) appropriates the visual material that surrounds us to reflect on individual and social experience. Installations such as Album IV (2004-05) memorialize a rapidly disappearing world, in this case printed magazines, a media format struggling in the onslaught of the Internet age.

Idris Khan
Wednesday, April 28, 6:30 pm
Idris Khan (b. 1978, Birmingham, England) repeatedly turns to the work of twentieth-century photographers who have explored the notion of the archive. His Homage to Bernd Becher (2007) compresses an entire group of the photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher into a single, multilayered composition, paying tribute to the sheer labor and singular vision of the original creators while offering a melancholy reminder of the passage of time.

Sarah Charlesworth
Tuesday, May 4, 6:30 pm
Employing a deconstructive technique inspired by Conceptual art and poststructuralist theory, the work of Sarah Charlesworth (b. 1947, East Orange, New Jersey) poses questions about photographic representation and the way history is reconstructed through photographs. In Herald Tribune: November 1977 (1977), for instance, she manipulated prints of newspaper pages to reveal how the news media can shape particular events, which in turn affect the opinions of the viewer.

Walead Beshty
Wednesday, May 26, 6:30 pm
In 2001, Walead Beshty (b. 1976, London) began a project documenting the abandoned Iraqi diplomatic mission in former East Berlin. In his own words, the site represented "a relic of two bygone regimes, unclaimable by any nation; a physical location marooned between symbolic shifts in global politics." When exposure marks were furthermore left by airport x-ray machines on Beshty's camera film, the artist realized the new set of ghostly traces on the images constituted the "core dialectic" of his investigation-a tension between what once was and what remains in the photographic artifact.

Stan Douglas
Wednesday, June 9, 6:30 pm
Stan Douglas (b. 1960, Vancouver) utilizes forms of popular entertainment-cinema and television-to destabilize narratives that depict society as a unified, homogeneous front with one history, one set of desires, and one value system. The film installation Der Sandmann investigates the intersection of history and memory as witnessed against the backdrop of post-Cold War Germany. Shot on 16mm film, and projected as two separate but intersecting videos that show a community garden in use during the 1960s and as a construction site some 20 years later, Der Sandmann contemplates temporality and the transformative effects of history.

$10, $7 members, FREE for students with RSVP to boxoffice@guggenheim.org
For tickets, call the Box Office: 212 423 3587

PERFORMANCE/SYMPOSIUM
Thinking Performance at the Guggenheim
Thursday, June 17, 8 pm (performance)
Friday, June 18, 2 pm (symposium)
Encompassing issues pertaining to site specificity, live action, the place of memory, and the role of the document, focused presentations as well as a performance by Joan Jonas provide an opportunity to think deeply about specific practices in contemporary performance. Featured speakers include: Marina Abramovic, Jennifer Blessing, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Susan Philipsz, Rebecca Schneider, Nancy Spector, and Nat Trotman.

$30, $20 members, $10 students
For tickets, call the Box Office: 212 423 3587

FAMILY PROGRAMS
Family Tour and Workshop: Photography
Sunday, April 18, 11 am-1:30 pm
Explore portraits and landscapes and find inspiration to incorporate family photographs into a mixed-media work of art. All materials included. For families with children ages 5-10.

$30 per family, $20 members, free for family members
Registration required, 212 423 3587

Just Drop In!
Sundays, 1-4 pm
Every Sunday, families with children ages 3-10 are invited to explore exhibition highlights through creative, interactive projects led by museum educators. Just Drop In! programs are free with museum admission, and do not require reservations. Additionally, free Family Activity Packs are available at the Information Desk during the run of Haunted. Filled with suggestions for things to do and talk about when visiting the museum, including artwork-specific question cards, touch objects, games, picture books, sketchpads and pencils, the Haunted Family Activity Pack is recommended for families with children ages 5-10.

FREE with museum admission
For more information, visit guggenheim.org/families

TOURS & GALLERY PROGRAMS
Curator's Eye
Fri, Apr 30, 2 pm
Join Assistant Curator Nat Trotman for a tour of Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance.

Curator's Eye
Fri, May 21, 2 pm
Join Curator of Photography Jennifer Blessing for a tour of Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance.

Conservator's Eye
Fri, Jun 18, 2 pm
Guggenheim Museum conservator Jeffrey Warda leads an exhibition tour focusing on how works of photography and film pertain to preservation.

FREE with museum admission

Mind's Eye
Mon, Apr 12, 6-8 pm
As part of the museum's free programs for partially sighted, blind, and deaf visitors, Guggenheim Museum educators Georgia Krantz and Guthrie Nutter guide an interactive tour and discussion focusing on Haunted, followed by a private reception.

FREE with RSVP at 212 360 4355 or at access@guggenheim.org