Why Sculpture Now

2016 Nasher Prize Dialogues | Location: London

Why Sculpture Now? is a Nasher Prize Dialogues program made in conjunction with the 2016 Nasher Prize, and created to foster international awareness of sculpture and of the Nasher Prize. In this first stimulating discussion, participating panelists included Lisa Le Feuvre, Okwui Enwezor, Phyllida Barlow, Michael Dean, Eva Rothschild, and Jed Morse. Organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center, in association with The Henry Moore Institute and the ICA .

 

Watch the Conversation  Read the Transcript

Moderator / Lisa Le Feuvre, Head of Sculpture Studies at the Henry Moore Institute 
Since November 2010, Le Feuvre has led the Henry Moore Institute, a centre for the study of sculpture, as Head of Sculpture Studies. Setting out to expand the understanding and scholarship of historical and contemporary sculpture, the organisation presents a year-round programme of exhibitions, conferences and lectures, as well as developing research, collections and publications. Her curated exhibitions at the Institute include ‘Katrina Palmer: The Necropolitan Line’, ‘Paul Neagu: Palpable Sculpture’, ‘Gego:Line as Object’, ‘Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things’, ‘The Event Sculpture’, ‘Michael Dean: Government’ and ‘Robert Filliou: The Institute of Endless Possibilities’. Between 2005 and 2009 Le Feuvre directed the contemporary art programme at the National Maritime Museum, working with artists including Lawrence Weiner, Esther Shalev-Gerz and Renee Green. 

Panelists

Okwui Enwezor, Director, Haus der Kunst, Nasher Prize juror 
Okwui Enwezor is a curator, art critic, editor and writer. Since 2011 he has been the Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich. He is curator of the 56th International Art Exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale and previously served as Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa (1996-1998); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (1998-2002); the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla, Spain (2005-2007); the 7th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2008); and the Triennal d’Art Contemporain of Paris, Palais de Tokyo (2012). Enwezor’s practice spans international exhibitions, museums, academia, and publishing. His research includes video and photography, archives theory, photographic documentation, photojournalism, and museums history. He also studies theories on diasporas and migrations of post-colonial modernism, and the architecture and urbanism of post-colonial African cities. 

Phyllida Barlow, artist, Nasher Prize juror 
Since retiring in 2009 after forty years of teaching at the Slade School of Art, Phyllida Barlow has mounted a number of highly acclaimed, daring exhibitions of monumental sculpture, including her recent solo exhibition ‘tryst’ at the Nasher Sculpture Center. Her exhibition dock, a Duveen Commission at TATE Britain in London (2014), was called “in every way tremendous” by critic Adrian Searle of The Guardian. Other solo exhibitions include: ‘set,’ Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2015); ‘HOARD’, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL.; ‘Scree’, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA (2013); ‘Phyllida Barlow: siege’ at the New Museum, New York, NY (2012); BRINK, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany (2012); ‘Phyllida Barlow: Bad Copies,’ Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, England (2012), among others. 

Michael Dean, artist 
Born in Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1977, Michael Dean lives and works in London, UK. His work explores themes of language, the act of writing, and the struggle to communicate in a variety of forms, including sculpture, photography, poetry, plays, publications and performance. He has had solo exhibitions de Appel arts centre, Amsterdam, NL; Extra City Kunstal Antwerp, Antwerp, BE; Supportico Lopez, Berlin, DE; Kunst Forum Ludwig, Aachen, DE; Pied-à-terre, San Francisco, US; Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London, UK; Kunstverein, Freiburg, DE; Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, LV; Austrian Museum of Applied Art, Vienna, AT; ABC, Berlin, DE; Nomas Foundation, Rome, IT; Lorcan O’neil, Rome, IT; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK; among others. Dean also has upcoming solo exhibitions at South London Gallery, London, UK and the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, US. 

Eva Rothschild, artist 
Born in Dublin in 1971, and currently based in London, Rothschild has received acclaim for works that reshape the legacy of minimalist and post-minimalist sculpture to offer evocative, open-ended experiences to the viewer. She made her fi large- scale intervention in a museum space in 2009, when she created Cold Corners, Tate Britain’s Duveens Commission. In 2011, she created ‘Empire’ for the Public Art Fund, New York, placing a monumental, multidirectional archway of steel at one of the entrances to Central Park. Rothschild has exhibited widely at museums, including Hepworth Wakefi Tate Britain, and Kunsthaus Basel, and mounted solo exhibitions at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Dublin, Ireland; Stuart Shave, London; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland; New Art Center, Wiltshire, UK, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK; The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland, among others. 

Jed Morse, Chief Curator, Nasher Sculpture Center 
Jed Morse joined the staff of the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2002 as Assistant Curator. At the Nasher, he has organized numerous exhibitions and contributed to their attendant publications, including ‘David Smith: Drawing + Sculpting’; ‘Matisse: Painter as Sculptor’; ‘Jaume Plensa: Genus and Species’; ‘Tony Cragg: Seeing Things’; ‘Ernesto Neto Cuddle on the Tightrope’; ‘Katharina Grosse: WUNDERBLOCK’; ‘Return to Earth: Ceramic Sculpture of Fontana, Melotti, Miró, Noguchi, and Picasso, 1943–1963’; ‘Nasher XChange: 10 Years. 10 Artists. 10 Sites’; ‘Phyllida Barlow ‘tryst’’; ‘Giuseppe Penone: Being the River, Repeating the Forest’; and the ‘Sightings’ series of installations by contemporary artists such as Diana Al-Hadid, Martin Creed, Nathan Mabry, Anna-Bella Papp, Bettina Pousttchi, Eva Rothschild, Alyson Shotz, and Erick Swenson. 

Nasher Sculpture Center
2001 Flora Street
Dallas, Texas 75201
214.242.5100
Stay Connected