Dec 14, 2021, 6 PM – 8 PM

Ways of Seeing: An Evening of Readings

Francis Picabia, *Transparence [Transparency]*, c.1930–1933. Opaque watercolor, crayon, and charcoal on paper, 14 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches (36.2 x 31.1 cm). Jack Shear Collection © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

Join us for an evening of selected readings from our newest publication Ways of Seeing: Writings on Drawings from the Jack Shear Collection. Co-edited by Chief Curator Claire Gilman and critic and writer Hilton Als, the anthology takes as its subject what contributor Nick Mauss calls the “singular fluency between drawing and writing.”

Hilton Als will introduce authors Nick Mauss, Charlie Porter, Brenda Shaughnessy, Clare Sestanovich, and Jennifer Krasinski who will read selections from their contributions to the publication.

The authors were asked to reflect on drawings of their choosing from the expansive collection of Jack Shear—artist, curator, and President of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. The contributions include poignant and insightful stories, poems, personal ruminations, and visual analyses of objects from across countries and centuries resulting in a unique marriage of visual art and literature that testifies to the uncontainable power of art to make meaning over and over and over again.

Please note that masks and proof of vaccination are required in order to attend this event. American Sign Language Interpretation will be provided live for this event.

Hilton Als

Hilton Als began contributing to The New Yorker in 1989, writing pieces for “Talk of the Town.” He became a staff writer in 1994, a theater critic in 2002, and chief theater critic in 2013. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing, a George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his work at The New Yorker in 2017. He is the author of the critically acclaimed anthology of essays White Girls, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Lambda Literary Award in 2014, and is a Professor at Columbia University’s Writing Program.
Jennifer Krasinski

Jennifer Krasinski is a writer, critic, and the editorial director of Artforum digital. She is a frequent contributor to Bookforum, and formerly the art columnist for the Village Voice. She has contributed essays to catalogs on artists Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, critic Jill Johnston, and the theater artist Reza Abdoh, as well as others. She was a recipient of a 2013 Creative Capital / Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Nick Mauss

Nick Mauss is an artist based in New York. He has presented exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel (2020); the Whitney Museum of American Art (2018); Triennale di Milano (2018); and Museo Serralves, Porto (2017), among others, and has participated in group exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; S.M.A.K., Gent; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Mauss’s writing has appeared in artists’ monographs as well as in journals including October, Octopus Notes, Texte zur Kunst, and Artforum.
Charlie Porter

Charlie Porter is a writer whose book What Artists Wear was published in the U.K. by Penguin in 2021, and will be published in the US by W.W. Norton in 2022. He has written for publications such as Financial Times, New York Times, British Vogue, The Guardian, i-D, and Luncheon.
Clare Sestanovich

Clare Sestanovich is an editor at The New Yorker and the author of the short-story collection Objects of Desire, pubished by Knopf. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s, and Electric Literature.
Brenda Shaughnessy

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of five poetry collections, most recently The Octopus Museum (Knopf), a New York Times 2019 Notable Book. Our Andromeda (2012) was a finalist for the Griffin International Prize, the PEN/Open Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Prize. She received a 2018 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a 2013 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Her second book, Human Dark with Sugar, won the James Laughlin Award. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark and lives with her family in New Jersey.

Support for this program is kindly provided by Sotheby’s.

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Dec 14, 2021, 6 PM – 8 PM

Ways of Seeing: An Evening of Readings

Please note that masks and proof of vaccination are required in order to attend this event. American Sign Language Interpretation will be provided live for this event.

Program Documentation