News & Events Lecture on Contemporary Artist Jonathan Meese Opens Mead Art Museum Exhibition Oct. 19

October 3, 2008
Contact: Karen Cardinal
Accounting, Web, and Marketing Manager
Mead Art Museum
(413) 542-2551  
kmcardinal@amherst.edu

AMHERST, Mass.—Amherst College’s Mead Art Museum will sponsor a lecture titled “Ahoi de Angst: Meese, Myth and Culture” by contemporary art scholar Kim Conaty on Sunday, Oct. 19, at 3:30 p.m. in Stirn Auditorium on the school’s campus. Conaty will survey the work of contemporary German artist Jonathan Meese since his emergence on the international art scene in 1998, with a focus on works in the Mead installation titled ALARM de ALARM (PROPAGANDA IN ALASKA): New and Recent Works by Jonathan Meese from the Collection of Adam Lindemann ’83 and Amalia Dayan, as well as the artist’s anticipated early December performance at Amherst, DRIVE ME HOMEESE BABYBABY, TO ERZLAND (ACHTUNG)—Meese’s first at an American college. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Meese’s work simultaneously engages and challenges viewers, incorporating a complex range of subjects and artistic media. The artist draws from sources as divergent as popular culture, European history and classical mythology to create works of art that often defy classification among traditional media. Conaty will trace the artist’s evolving concerns, while contextualizing his work within the larger framework of postwar German art and in relation to performance events from Dada to contemporary artists Paul McCarthy and Marina Abramovic. Bringing the discussion up to the present, Conaty will situate Meese’s practice within the larger concept of “extended practice”: as the boundaries between traditionally distinct media are blurred, work in one medium informs and is even subsumed within another.
   
Kim Conaty holds an M.A. in art history from Williams College and is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she specializes in 20th- century German art. She recently served as the coordinator for the 2008 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art and is currently a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
   
The Mead Art Museum is open year-round from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesdays through Sundays, and until 9 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month. During the academic term, the museum also remains open until midnight on school nights (Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays). Admission is always free of charge, and the museum is fully accessible. To learn more, please visit the Mead’s website, www.amherst.edu/museums/mead or call 413/542-2335.