The Academy Blog

Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, a publication he created in 2009 in response to the changes in the art world, publishing, and the distribution of information. Breaking news, award-winning reporting, informed opinions, and quality conversations about art have helped Hyperallergic reach over 1 million readers a month. Hrag launched the Hyperallergic podcast in 2016 which travels around the globe to uncover the evolving world of art.

In addition, he has curated projects, exhibitions and has organized public events since 1997. Highlights of his curatorial efforts include exhibitions at BAM, Storefront Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and #theSocialGraph at Outpost, the world’s first multi-disciplinary exhibition of social media-related art in 2010. He has visited many universities and colleges as a visiting critic including RISD, Brooklyn College, UC Davis, Pratt, Columbia and UNLV, as well as moderated panel discussions and juried exhibitions for various organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and Chautauqua Institution. Beyond his writing, he is an avid photographer and collector of photographs. He is committed to serious, playful, and radical storytelling that pushes the boundaries of writing.

Jason Andrew is an independent scholar, curator, and producer. A prominent figure in the Brooklyn art scene, Mr. Andrew is the co-founder and director of Norte Maar, a non-profit with a mission to encourage, promote and present collaborative projects in the arts.

Guarding against special interests in any particular style or genre, his curatorial projects bridge gaps left in art history and reflect the creative imagination of the past, present and future. Mr. Andrew is a patron of young artists and consultant to collectors. He frequently lectures on the creative imagination and its relationship to collaboration within the various disciplines of visual, literary and the performing arts.
In 2014, Mr. Andrew was included in Brooklyn Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture. His curatorial projects got him voted “Best Exhibitionist” by the Village Voice (2011), and his promotion of cross disciplinary arts got him featured in L Magazine’s article “Who Made the New Brooklyn,” (2011). His exhibitions have been critically reviewed by Artforum, Art in America, Art News, and The New York Times among others.

Specializing in the field of Post War American Art, Mr. Andrew is the Curator/Manager of the Estate of American Abstract Expressionist painter Jack Tworkov. He has organized countless exhibitions and lectured extensively on the artist and his contemporaries including the first retrospective of the artist’s work in New York City at the UBS Art Gallery in 2009. Andrew has published extensively on the artist and his contemporaries and is currently editing the catalogue raisonné of paintings by Jack Tworkov. Concurrently he is working with the Estate of Elizabeth Murray.

Scott Rothkopf is the Deputy Director for Programs and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He joined the Whitney’s staff in 2009 as curator and in that role has organized Wade Guyton OS (2012) and Glenn Ligon: AMERICA (2011), which traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Rothkopf co-curated the permanent collection exhibitions Sinister Pop (2012, with Donna De Salvo) and Singular Visions (2010, with Dana Miller) and jointly oversees the Whitney’s Painting and Sculpture Acquisition Committee with De Salvo. Rothkopf also curated Jeff Koons: A Retrospective (2014), the last exhibition at the Breuer building, which traveled internationally to the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. He was a member of the Core Team which planned America Is Hard to See (2015), the Whitney’s inaugural exhibition in its new building downtown. This year, Rothkopf has co-curated Open Plan: Andrea Fraser (with Laura Phipps), Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection (with Dana Miller), and Virginia Overton: Sculpture Gardens (with Laura Phipps) at the Whitney.

On Thursday, February 23, Renée Bovenzi (MFA 2006), Director of Benrubi Gallery, will give a lunch lecture on how to price your work. As part of the lecture, she will use your actual art as examples. We encourage each student to bring up to one piece to be discussed.

Renée Bovenzi is the Director of Benrubi Gallery in Chelsea, specializing in contemporary photography. She has held director positions at both Churner and Churner and Moti Hasson Gallery. In 2006 she received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art, where she served on the Alumni Board as Vice President from 2008-2015.

Caroline Woolard (b. 1984) is a New York-based artist born in Rhode Island. Woolard co-creates art and institutions for the solidarity economy. Her multi-year, collaborative projects include OurGoods.org (2008-2016); TradeSchool.coop (2009-2016); and BFAMFAPhD.com (2014-2016). Recent commissions include WOUND, Cooper Union, New York, NY (2016); and Capitoline Wolves, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2016), and MoMA Studio: Exchange Café, New York, NY (2014). Her work will be featured in documentaries on PBS / Art21 over the next two years.

Mark Tribe is an artist who works across media and forms, including drawing, photography, installation, video and performance. His recent work explores the relationship between landscape and technology. He has had solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Momenta Art in New York; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; the Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston, Australia; and DiverseWorks in Houston. His work has also been exhibited at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York; Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York;  the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; the Menil Collection in Houston; the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; the National Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow;  SITE Santa Fe; the San Diego Museum of Art;  and the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin. He has received grants from Creative Capital and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is the author of two books, The Port Huron Project: Reenactments of New Left Protest Speeches (Charta, 2010) and New Media Art (Taschen, 2006). Tribe is Chair of the MFA Fine Arts Department at School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 1996, he founded Rhizome, an organization that supports the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology.

Deana Haggag has been the Executive Director of The Contemporary, a nomadic and non-collecting art museum based in Baltimore, MD, since the spring of 2013. Since her appointment, she has helped organize projects with artists Victoria Fu, Miriam Simun, Abigail DeVille, Michael Jones McKean, and others. Prior to her work with the museum, she was the Curator-in-Residence at Gallery CA, which is also located in Baltimore, MD in the City Arts building—home to over 90 artists. In addition to her work at The Contemporary, Deana lectures extensively, consults on various public art initiatives, contributes to cultural publications, and teaches at institutions such as Towson University and Johns Hopkins University. She is on the board of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, and has served as a member of the Affiliates Board for the Museums and Society Program at Johns Hopkins University and StageOne/FANS council at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Deana was named “10 People to Watch Under 30” by the Baltimore Sun in 2013 and a “Young Cultural Innovator” by the Salzburg Global Forum in 2015. She received her MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA from Rutgers University in Art History and Philosophy.

William Powhida makes fun of the art world to highlight the paradoxes and absurdities of economic and social value systems that keep the sphere of visual art afloat on a tide of inequality. His work relies on research and participation to diagram, list, perform and critique the forces that shape perceptions of value in art. He is partly responsible for slightly more socially conscious projects including MONTH2MONTH, #Rank, and #Class in collaboration with artist Jennifer Dalton.  He is an infrequent contributor to Hyperallergic, ArtFCity, and the Art Newspaper.

John Ahearn was born in Binghamton, New York in 1951 and lives and works in New York City. He was a founding member of Collaborative Projects, Inc. and co-organizer of the “Times Square Show,” 1980. John Ahearn’s work alongside that of his long-time collaborator, Rigoberto Torres was the subject of a survey exhibition, “South Bronx Hall of Fame,” organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, Houston in 1991 which traveled to museums in Europe and North America. In the 1980s and 1990s the artists executed several outdoor murals in the Bronx, New York and collaborated on public projects and exhibitions in Europe and North America. Between 2000 and 2002 John Ahearn completed a public project in Pan Chiao, Taiwan and between 2005 and 2006, Ahearn and Torres collaborated on two large scale wall murals at the Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporânea in Brazil. In the fall of 2010, their work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark. In May 2012, John Ahearn participated in the special projects section of the Frieze Art Fair on Randall’s Island, where he presented a reconstruction of his legendary 1979 exhibition at Fashion Moda, “South Bronx Hall of Fame.”

Sunshine (with Stripes), 1993, John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres

David Ebershoff is the author of four books, including The Danish Girl and the #1 bestseller The 19th Wife. The Danish Girl is a fictional account of painter Lili Elbe, who worked in Paris in the 1920s and 30s and became the subject of an Oscar-winning film starring Academy Award-winners Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander.

Ebershoff’s books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages to critical acclaim and Out Magazine has twice named him to its annual Out 100 list of influential LGBT people. David had a long career as an editor at Random House, where he edited more than twenty New York Times bestsellers and three Pulitzer Prize winners and a winner of the National Book Award. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University.

On December 14, New York Academy of Art faculty member Roberto Osti will give a talk on artistic anatomy and how to portray the human form. Osti will also sign copies of his recently published book Basic Human Anatomy: An Essential Visual Guide for Artists (Monacelli Press), which presents artists with the same system of line, shape and form used by da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. He has exhibited extensively in Italy and the United States, including at the Bologna Museum of Modern Art, the Drawing Center and the New York Academy of Sciences, and his work has been featured in Scientific American and The New York Times.

(Fast forward to 11:20)

On November 28, the Academy will stage its first-ever Facebook livestream, featuring three of our renowned drawing faculty. Over three hours, Dan Thompson, Vincent Desiderio and Michael Grimaldi will be giving a figure drawing demonstration with a live model, and discussing perspective, light and shadow, and key techniques for portraiture. We’ll be accepting questions over Facebook in real time!

If you’re interested in attending the event in person, email khemmer@nyaa.edu to RSVP.
Space is limited. If you can’t make it, be sure to watch on Facebook Live!

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The New York Academy of Art presents a lecture by fine art insurance specialist Laura Murphy Doyle. An invaluable presentation for both art collectors and working artists, Doyle will discuss all issues related to the acquisition, handling and storage of art pieces, including packing and transit conditions, ephemeral materials, common mistakes, ideal displays and the Visual Artist’s Rights Act

Laura Murphy Doyle attended the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia and the University of bristol in Florence, Italy, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History with a focus on Fine Art Management. Laura has a certificate in Appraisal Studies of fine and Decorative Arts from New York University in New York City. As the National Fine Art and Collections Specialist at Chubb, Doyle services high value collectors by consulting on risk mitigation for fine art, antiques, jewelry and collectibles. She is responsible for developing New Collector Services, including valuation reviews, review of consignment and loan agreements, advisory on packing, shipping, disaster planning and collection management, and referrals to fine art professionals such as art handlers and conservators. She is a member of the Arts & Records Committee of the Inland Marine Underwriter’s Association, ArtTable and the Appraisers Association of America.

Kathy Grayson is the owner and director of the Hole, a contemporary art gallery. Opened in July of 2010 on the Bowery, the Hole presents monthly solo and group exhibitions featuring artists from emerging to established including Kembra Pfahler, Holton Rower, Lola Montes Schnabel and Matthew Stone. Previous to founding the Hole, Grayson was a director at Deitch Projects.