American Folk Art Museum

October 23, 2024 Many gameboards on view in the exhibition Playing with Design: Gameboards, Art and Culture offer a glimpse into the social and economic changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As locally-made artifacts and educational tools, they often reflect, if not reinforce, the values and priorities of modern America.  Using the Wendel Gameboard Collection as a reference, game scholar and designer Mary Flanagan (Critical Play: Radical Game Design, 2009, MIT; Playing Oppression. The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games, 2023, MIT) will discuss her historical research about game rules, design, role-playing and community building. Followed by a conversation with Naomi Clarck, Chair of the NYU Game Center, her presentation will highlight the cultural and political significance of board games such as the Game of the Goose, Monopoly, Chess and Parcheesi while shedding a new light on play, and the game industry.  About the speakers Mary Flanagan has a research-based, transdisciplinary practice informed by her methodology “critical play.” She investigates and exploits the seams between technology, play, and human experience to make the unseen perceptible. Interested in the ways technologies can adopt or represent hidden biases, Flanagan uncovers the underpinnings of technological systems to make them apparent. Her approach involves both onscreen space as well as physical spaces, objects, and actions. She sees the computer as a collaborator and pursues collisions with aleatory events, chance operations and glitched code.  Flanagan has exhibited internationally at venues such as The Guggenheim New York, Tate Britain, Museu de Arte, Arquitectura e Tecnologia Lisbon, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, The Baltimore Museum of Art, NeMe Arts Center, Cyprus, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Spain, Museum of Fine Arts Cologne, and the Whitney Biennial of American Art.  Her work is featured in public and private collections, including The Whitney Museum and ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Germany and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Flanagan won the Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica in the Interactive art+ for her work [help me know the truth] and is the recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies Digital Innovation Fellowship, the Thoma Foundation Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, and has been awarded residencies with the Brown Foundation, MacDowell, Bogliasco, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.  Flanagan has lectured widely including at Oxford, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, and the Sorbonne. She was a John Paul Getty Museum Scholar, a Senior Scholar in Residence at the Cornell Society for the Humanities, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto and received an Honoris Causa in Design, Illinois Institute of Technology. Her work has been supported by commissions and grants including The British Arts Council, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Flanagan has been invited as a cultural leader at the World Economic Forum at Davos. She is also the Fairchild Distinguished Professor of Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College and lives and works in Hanover, NH and the city of Houston, TX. Naomi Clark is a game designer, teacher, and scholar who has been making games since 1999. In that time, she's contributed to over three dozen titles in varied roles, including game designer, writer, and producer, as well as occasionally contributing to code and graphic design. Naomi’s experience ranges from games for well-known companies such as LEGO and Atari to casual and mobile games for mass audiences, along with smaller-scale independent and experimental work. Besides her industry experience, Naomi is also a games scholar and critic. She co-authored A Game Design Vocabulary, a textbook that provides a conceptual framework for game analysis and creation, and contributed to collections including Queer Game Studies, Videogames for Humans, and Honey and Hot Wax. She has given numerous talks at game conferences and festivals such as the Game Developers Conference, A MAZE, Indiecade, Games for Change and DiGRA. Prior to her appointment as a NYU faculty member in 2016, Naomi served as an adjunct professor at Parsons: the New School for Design, the School of Visual Arts, and the New York Film Academy in addition to NYU. She served as one of the first advisors for the NYU Game Center's incubator and developed early courses for the department's graduate and undergraduate curriculum. For the NYU Game Center's No Quarter exhibition, she created Consentacle, a two-player card game that explores complex themes of sexuality and consent. Her current work spans cooperative strategy games and roleplaying.

July 30, 2024 The exhibition Somewhere to Roost takes inspiration from the artistic practice of Thornton Dial, Sr., whose poetically-entitled work, “Birds Got to Have Somewhere to Roost,” invites us to consider the importance of sanctuary, comfort and safety for everyone.  In this program, exhibition curator Brooke Wyatt walks us through the exhibition Somewhere to Roost, inviting viewers to contemplate a range of objects including painting and sculpture, furniture, quilts, and photographs. Highlighting how works by self-taught and folk artists evoke a sense of home, this curatorial walkthrough will provide further reflections on the spaces where artists from the AFAM collection live(d) and work(ed) while conjuring imaginary places that assert the importance of rest, safety and ecological care.  Somewhere to Roost is the third in a series of thematic shows drawn from the Museum’s collection that runs from March 2023 to May 2025. These exhibitions invite viewers to admire the museum’s collection up close while showcasing an expansive history of American art. About the speaker Brooke Wyatt is Luce Assistant Curator at the American Folk Art Museum where she is working on a series of exhibitions drawn from the Museum's collection of folk and self-taught art. She practiced as a clinical therapist in community mental health settings and worked as an art teacher before beginning her PhD in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. Brooke's doctoral dissertation, titled "Séraphine Louis and Self-Taught Art in Transatlantic Modernist Discourse," explores the material and representational strategies of the French artist Séraphine Louis, foregrounding how histories of race, gender, class, and disability have shaped the reception and exhibition of Louis's work across Europe and the Americas from the late 1920s to the present day.

May 3, 2024 CLOSING CONVERSATION From a Curse to a Critical Perspective With W. J. T. Mitchell & Hannah Zeavin Credit The symposium “Institutional Psychotherapy: Legacy and Constellations of Francesc Tosquelles” is presented in partnership with the Remarque Institute at NYU, and The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.  Lead support for this program is provided by the Institut Ramon Llull, Nina Beaty, Susan Weiler, and the Anthony Petullo Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Art Dealers Association of America Foundation, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the David Davies and Jack Weeden Fund for Exhibitions.  Co-organized by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and Les Abattoirs, Musée– Frac Occitanie Toulouse, this four-venue collaboration was previously presented at the Abattoirs, CCCB, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. It developed from a research project entitled “El llegat oblidat de Francesc Tosquelles” (The forgotten legacy of Francesc Tosquelles), co-produced by the Mir-Puig Private Foundation (Barcelona), the University of Barcelona, and Fundació Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona).

May 3, 2024 PANEL 4 From Occupational Therapy to Disability Art With Suzanne Hudson, Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, Amanda Cachia Introduced and moderated by Emily Watlington Credit The symposium “Institutional Psychotherapy: Legacy and Constellations of Francesc Tosquelles” is presented in partnership with the Remarque Institute at NYU, and The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Lead support for this program is provided by the Institut Ramon Llull, Nina Beaty, Susan Weiler, and the Anthony Petullo Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Art Dealers Association of America Foundation, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the David Davies and Jack Weeden Fund for Exhibitions. Co-organized by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and Les Abattoirs, Musée– Frac Occitanie Toulouse, this four-venue collaboration was previously presented at the Abattoirs, CCCB, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. It developed from a research project entitled “El llegat oblidat de Francesc Tosquelles” (The forgotten legacy of Francesc Tosquelles), co-produced by the Mir-Puig Private Foundation (Barcelona), the University of Barcelona, and Fundació Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona).

May 3, 2024 PANEL 3 Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole Psychiatric Hospital: A Laboratory for the Arts? With Raphael Koenig, Valérie Rousseau & Kaira M. Cabañas Introduced and moderated by Allison Morehead Credit The symposium “Institutional Psychotherapy: Legacy and Constellations of Francesc Tosquelles” is presented in partnership with the Remarque Institute at NYU, and The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.  Lead support for this program is provided by the Institut Ramon Llull, Nina Beaty, Susan Weiler, and the Anthony Petullo Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Art Dealers Association of America Foundation, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the David Davies and Jack Weeden Fund for Exhibitions.  Co-organized by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and Les Abattoirs, Musée– Frac Occitanie Toulouse, this four-venue collaboration was previously presented at the Abattoirs, CCCB, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. It developed from a research project entitled “El llegat oblidat de Francesc Tosquelles” (The forgotten legacy of Francesc Tosquelles), co-produced by the Mir-Puig Private Foundation (Barcelona), the University of Barcelona, and Fundació Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona).

May 2, 2024 PANEL 2 From Disalienating to Decarcerating Mental Illness in the United States With Martin Summers, the Greene Clinic & Fountain House and Liat Ben-Moshe Introduced and moderated by Edward Dioguardi Credit The symposium “Institutional Psychotherapy: Legacy and Constellations of Francesc Tosquelles” is presented in partnership with the Remarque Institute at NYU, and The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Lead support for this program is provided by the Institut Ramon Llull, Nina Beaty, Susan Weiler, and the Anthony Petullo Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Art Dealers Association of America Foundation, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the David Davies and Jack Weeden Fund for Exhibitions. Co-organized by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and Les Abattoirs, Musée– Frac Occitanie Toulouse, this four-venue collaboration was previously presented at the Abattoirs, CCCB, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. It developed from a research project entitled “El llegat oblidat de Francesc Tosquelles” (The forgotten legacy of Francesc Tosquelles), co-produced by the Mir-Puig Private Foundation (Barcelona), the University of Barcelona, and Fundació Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona).