When Art Needs Room to Breathe - WCMA Director to Present 5th in Faculty Lecture Series, March 6

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Feb. 29, 2008 — Lisa Corrin, director of the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), will deliver the fifth lecture in the Annual Williams Faculty Lecture Series on Thursday, March 6.

The lecture is titled “When Art Needs Room to Breathe: The Marriage of Art and Urban Green Space on Seattle’s Waterfront.” Her talk will begin at 4 p.m. in Wege Auditorium, The Science Center, on the Williams campus. The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow. Seating is on a first come basis.

Her lecture will consider what it means for a museum to create Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park. The Park opened in January 2007 transforming what was previously a nine-acre waterfront industrial site into a downtown public green space on Seattle’s waterfront.

The lecture will look at the approach to the Park’s dynamic and flexible artistic program that features major works by iconic modernists such as Anthony Caro, Richard Serra, Claes Oldenburg, Beverly Pepper, Louise Nevelson, Mark DiSuvero, Ellsworth Kelly, and Tony Smith.

Before coming to WCMA, Corrin was the artistic lead on the Park and responsible for much of what’s remarkable about the Park. Corrin was deputy director of art and the Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum.

Corrin came to Williams College in 2005. Before her tenure at the Seattle Art Museum, she was chief curator of the Serpentine Gallery in London. Previously, as chief curator at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, she supervised “Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson,” named Exhibition of the Year in 1992 by the American Association of Museums. Her book of the same name was awarded the Wittenborn Prize in 1994.

Corrin earned a B.A. at Mary Washington College and studied at University College, London. She did her graduate work at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Johns Hopkins University.

At Williams, in addition to directing the museum, Corrin teaches an upper-level art history course exploring public art that will result in a practicum in which students propose policies, processes, and strategic vision for art on the Williams College campus.

Known as one of the finest college art museums in the country, WCMA houses 12,000 works that span the history of art. Within the broad range of periods and cultures represented, the collection emphasizes modern and contemporary art, American art from the late 18th century to the present, and the art of world cultures.

Associate Professor of Art Peter Low will deliver the sixth and final lecture of the Faculty Lecture Series on Thursday, March 13. His lecture “Materializing Metaphor: Bodies, Buildings, and Ephesians 2:11-22 in Medieval Art” will take place at 4 p.m. in Wege Auditorium.

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For building locations on the Williams campus, please consult the map outside the driveway entrance to the Security Office located in Hopkins Hall on Main Street (Rte. 2), next to the Thompson Memorial Chapel, or call the Office of Public Affairs (413) 597-4277. The map can also be found on the web at www.williams.edu/home/campusmap/

Event: Paige

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