The Academy Blog

Julie Heffernan is represented by PPOW Gallery (New York) and Catharine Clark Gallery (San Francisco). She has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States, Japan and Europe, and a travelling museum show entitled “When the Water Rises” originating at the LSU Museum of Art in 2016 in Baton Rouge and travelling to museums in red states throughout the country through 2019. She has participated in numerous group shows–at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, in Bremen, Me Museum, Olbricht Collection in Berlin and the Palazzo Reale in Milan, among others.

Heffernan has received numerous awards, including the NEA, NYFA and Fullbright, as well as a PS1 Artist-in-Residence, a Fellowship of the BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France; a Milton And Sally Avery Fellowship from MacDowell; and she was invited to be the Commencement Speaker for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the featured artist at Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Art in America, ArtForum and The New Yorker, among others; and is in numerous museums including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Me Museum in Berlin and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, VA.  She is a Professor of Fine Arts at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Damian Loeb (born 1970) is a self taught classical painter currently living and working in New York City. Loeb’s creative process involves collecting, studying, and creating intimately potent images through both painting and photography. In creating an empirical sense of reproduction, Loeb invents a dialogue between relativism and individual interpretation; exposing cultures codification of a popular visual vocabulary.

**PLEASE NOTE THIS LECTURE IS AT 1 PM ON SEPTEMBER 25

Navigating Social Media: Sharon Louden talks with social media guru Robin Cembalest about navigating social media to increase visibility and stay connected.

Described by artnet as “one of the leading lights of art-world social media,” Robin Cembalest is a journalist and editorial strategist. The former longtime executive editor of ARTnews, she has published widely in The Wall Street Journal and many other publications, and maintains her popular @rcembalest feeds on Instagram and Twitter. In her consulting business, Robin Cembalest Editorial Strategies, she works with art-world clients to design and implement editorial and digital content. She also founded and directs the Niboristas, a mentoring and networking group for young art-world professionals.
Twitter: @rcembalest    Instagram: @rcembalest

SARAH PETERS (b. 1973) lives and works in Queens, NY. Peters was educated at Virginia Commonwealth University (MFA), The University of Pennsylvania (BFA), and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Certificate). The artist is a recipient of awards and residencies from John Michael Kohler, WI and New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), NY (2011); The Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA (2010); and The Wallentas/Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program, Brooklyn, NY (2008). Solo and two-person exhibitions include Van Doren Waxter, New York, NY (2018);  Halsey McKay Gallery, New York, NY (2017); Eleven Rivington, New York (2015); 4 AM, New York (2015); Bodyrite(with Mira Dancy) at Asya Geisberg, NY (2014); Edward Winkleman Gallery, NY (2007,2010); and John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY (2013). Group exhibitions include Objects Like Us, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, curated by Amy Smith-Stewart and David Adamo (2018); Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY (2018); Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY (2018): Danese Gallery, New York, NY (2018); and Rodin and the Contemporary Figurative Tradition, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI (2017), among others. Her work has been reviewed and featured in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Artforum, and The Brooklyn Rail.

Vincent Desiderio and Daniel Maidman continue the conversation begun in their book “Theseus: Vincent Desiderio on Art,” holding a back and forth about art and ideas. Audience questions will be taken, and copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.

Collaboration, Social Media, Exchange in the Art World: Sharon Louden in conversation with the dynamic JiaJia Fei and Antwaun Sargent about their dynamic high-profile friendship, their presence on social media and their take on the art world today.

JiaJia Fei is a digital strategist with a decade of experience working at the intersection of digital marketing, branding, web, mobile, and social media content strategy for art and culture—making museums and cultural organizations more accessible through technology. She currently serves as the Director of Digital at the Jewish Museum in New York City, where she became the founding director of the Museum’s first digital department in 2016. Prior to joining the Jewish Museum, JiaJia served as Associate Director, Digital Marketing at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, bringing modern and contemporary art to a global online audience through award-winning digital initiatives. JiaJia received her BA in History of Art from Bryn Mawr College, and has lectured on the impact of art and technology worldwide.

Twitter: @VAJIAJIA   Instagram: @vajiajia

Antwaun Sargent is a writer and critic living and working in New York City. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, Interview, W,  Vogue, Aperture, Vice and various other publications. He frequently contributes to museum and gallery publications and this year he has written catalogue essays on artists Ed Clark, Mickalene Thomas, and Deborah Roberts. Recently he co-curated the Aperture Foundation exhibition, “The Way We Live Now,” and has lectured and been in conversation with artists at Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, Yale University, Brown University and various other

Twitter: @Sirsargent Instagram: @sirsargent

Erik Parker was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1968. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996 and a Master of Fine Arts from SUNY Purchase in 1998. Parker has been awarded several honors throughout his career, including the Durhurst Family Scholarship (1997(, Rose Scholarship (1997), and the Rema Hort-Mann Foundation Grant (1999).

Parker’s vividly colored paintings are filled with distorted shapes and otherworldly forms. Parker borrows liberally from the pop culture realms of comic books, hip hop, street graffiti, and cartoons to create imagery that is simultaneously familiar yet alien. Saturated landscapes with fauna of every color resemble the fantastical worlds of Dr. Seuss, while his hyperbolic portraits and use of graffiti-like text recall psychedelic album covers.

Parker has had solo exhibitions at galleries and museums around the world, including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield; De Appel, Amsterdam; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Forth Worth; and Nanzuka, Tokyo.

Born in New York City in 1931, Cunningham grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts where he studied art with Ben Shahn. He graduated from Harvard College in 1953 and served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. He returned to New York and studied painting with Edwin Dickinson and drawing and anatomy with Robert Beverly Hale at the Art Students League, championing figurative painting and sculpture through the heights of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism in New York. He taught for 18 years at the Brooklyn Museum School before co-founding the New Brooklyn School of Life Drawing, Painting and Sculpture with sculptor Barney Hodes in 1980. In 1983 he co-founded the New York Academy of Art.