Image: Barbara Kruger’s What Am I? commissioned by the Parrish Art Museum in conjunction with the exhibition, A Museum Looks at Itself: Mapping Past and Present at The Parrish Art Museum, 1897–1992. ©2023 Barbara Kruger
Talk | Donna De Salvo on “A Museum Looks at Itself”
Celebrating the Parrish’s 125th Anniversary
June 30, 6 pm - 7 pm
$5 Members | $16 Adults (Non-Members) $12 Seniors | Free for Students, Children
As part of a series of conversations recognizing the Parrish Art Museum’s rich history as a leading East End arts institution, former Robert Lehman Curator Donna de Salvo will discuss her landmark exhibition from 1992, A Museum Looks at Itself, which excavated the history of the Parrish and made it the subject of the exhibition Mapping Past and Present at the Parrish Art Museum, 1897-1992. Presented at the Parrish’s former home on Jobs Lane, the exhibition surveyed the Museum’s early beginnings as the Art Gallery of Southampton, and the Eurocentrism and politics of its founder, Samuel Longstreth Parrish, through to its turn towards American art. Parrish envisioned his museum as a “mini-Metropolitan Museum,” replete with Venetian panel paintings, plaster casts, and busts of the Roman Caesars). After his death, and under the leadership of Rebecca Bolling Littlejohn, the Museum’s subsequent decades focused on American art, privileging figuration over abstraction.
Writing in 1992 in Art in America, art historian Kenneth E. Silver noted, “As staged by curator Donna De Salvo with contributions by artists Fred Wilson and Judith Barry, the exhibition explored issues involving esthetic choice and period taste, notions of art-historical authenticity and America’s onetime cultural inferiority complex as well as questions of class consciousness and racism. Not bad for a provincial museum.”
Using the museum’s archives and collection, along with artist interventions, A Museum Looks at Itself was one attempt to reveal the often-concealed biases and beliefs that can shape the methodology and motives of a museum, and through such inquiry bring about change. These interventions and self-interrogations are more urgent now than ever. Join De Salvo as she talks about this landmark exhibition as well as its relevance today.
Donna De Salvo is a curator, writer, and consultant who has worked with numerous national and international artists and museum collections. De Salvo is currently Senior Adjunct Curator, Special Projects, Dia Art Foundation, held several positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, becoming its first Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs where she oversaw the museum’s curatorial department and program of exhibitions and acquisitions. Known for her thematic exhibitions, such as Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970 (Tate Modern) and Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition (1955-1962) (LAMoCA). De Salvo has also organized exhibitions or commissioned the work of Barbara Bloom, John Chamberlain, Roni Horn, Anish Kapoor, Barbara Kruger, Steve McQueen, Barnett Newman, Hélio Oiticica, Ed Ruscha, Cy Twombly, Lawrence Weiner, and Joe Zucker, amongst many others. De Salvo has held curatorial positions at Tate Modern, London; the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio; Dia Art Foundation, in New York; and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. In the 1990s, she was the Robert Lehman Curator at the Parrish Art Museum, where she organized numerous exhibitions, including an installation on Job’s Lane of the work of Maren Hassinger.
The program will be recorded and later available on the Parrish Youtube Channel.
Friday Nights are supported, in part by, Weill-Cornell Medicine – Southampton and The Corcoran Group
Talk | Donna De Salvo on “A Museum Looks at Itself”
Celebrating the Parrish’s 125th Anniversary
June 30, 6 pm - 7 pm
$5 Members | $16 Adults (Non-Members) $12 Seniors | Free for Students, Children
As part of a series of conversations recognizing the Parrish Art Museum’s rich history as a leading East End arts institution, former Robert Lehman Curator Donna de Salvo will discuss her landmark exhibition from 1992, A Museum Looks at Itself, which excavated the history of the Parrish and made it the subject of the exhibition Mapping Past and Present at the Parrish Art Museum, 1897-1992. Presented at the Parrish’s former home on Jobs Lane, the exhibition surveyed the Museum’s early beginnings as the Art Gallery of Southampton, and the Eurocentrism and politics of its founder, Samuel Longstreth Parrish, through to its turn towards American art. Parrish envisioned his museum as a “mini-Metropolitan Museum,” replete with Venetian panel paintings, plaster casts, and busts of the Roman Caesars). After his death, and under the leadership of Rebecca Bolling Littlejohn, the Museum’s subsequent decades focused on American art, privileging figuration over abstraction.
Writing in 1992 in Art in America, art historian Kenneth E. Silver noted, “As staged by curator Donna De Salvo with contributions by artists Fred Wilson and Judith Barry, the exhibition explored issues involving esthetic choice and period taste, notions of art-historical authenticity and America’s onetime cultural inferiority complex as well as questions of class consciousness and racism. Not bad for a provincial museum.”
Using the museum’s archives and collection, along with artist interventions, A Museum Looks at Itself was one attempt to reveal the often-concealed biases and beliefs that can shape the methodology and motives of a museum, and through such inquiry bring about change. These interventions and self-interrogations are more urgent now than ever. Join De Salvo as she talks about this landmark exhibition as well as its relevance today.
Donna De Salvo is a curator, writer, and consultant who has worked with numerous national and international artists and museum collections. De Salvo is currently Senior Adjunct Curator, Special Projects, Dia Art Foundation, held several positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, becoming its first Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs where she oversaw the museum’s curatorial department and program of exhibitions and acquisitions. Known for her thematic exhibitions, such as Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970 (Tate Modern) and Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition (1955-1962) (LAMoCA). De Salvo has also organized exhibitions or commissioned the work of Barbara Bloom, John Chamberlain, Roni Horn, Anish Kapoor, Barbara Kruger, Steve McQueen, Barnett Newman, Hélio Oiticica, Ed Ruscha, Cy Twombly, Lawrence Weiner, and Joe Zucker, amongst many others. De Salvo has held curatorial positions at Tate Modern, London; the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio; Dia Art Foundation, in New York; and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. In the 1990s, she was the Robert Lehman Curator at the Parrish Art Museum, where she organized numerous exhibitions, including an installation on Job’s Lane of the work of Maren Hassinger.
The program will be recorded and later available on the Parrish Youtube Channel.
Friday Nights are supported, in part by, Weill-Cornell Medicine – Southampton and The Corcoran Group
