Art History from Home:
Abstract Art in America

Online, via Zoom

This series of online talks highlights works in the Museum’s collection and current exhibitions to illuminate critical topics in American art from 1900 to the present. During each thirty-minute session, participants are invited to comment and ask questions through a moderated chat for a fifteen-minute Q&A following the talk. Sessions are available live only, Tuesdays at 6 pm and Thursdays at 12 pm, but topics and speakers do periodically repeat. Check back here for more sessions added regularly.

Nonrepresentational art has meant different things to different artists throughout American art history. This session presents a range of artists who have used abstract language to explore human perception, emotion, embodied experience, and more. It covers the early influence of Cubism and the American Abstract Artists union in the 1930s as well as the work of Abstract Expressionists, Minimalists, and artists associated with the 1960s civil rights movement.

Grant Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of art history at the University of Southern California and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney. His dissertation, “Sheila Hicks: Weaving to the World,” traces the first critical history of the prolific American artist, weaver, and pioneer of global contemporary art. An active curator, critic, and writer, he has published work in Artforum, Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail, Garage, and Performa Magazine, where he was a writer-in-residence from 2012 to 2014.