Join us for a Dunkerley Dialogue about artist Alma Thomas, whose work is featured in the Tang’s spring exhibition entitled Alma Thomas, organized by The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and The Studio Museum in Harlem.

The dialogue begins at 5 pm and features exhibition co-curators Lauren Haynes, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection at the Studio Museum; and Ian Berry, the Tang’s Dayton Director; and the artists Saya Woolfalk and Leslie Wayne.

About the Participants

Lauren Haynes is Associate Curator, Permanent Collection at The Studio Museum in Harlem. While at the Studio Museum, she has organized and co-organized exhibitions including Alma Thomas (2016; forthcoming); Ebony G. Patterson: … when they grow up … (2016; forthcoming); Stanley Whitney: Dance the Orange (2015); Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet and Contemporary Art (2014 -15); Carrie Mae Weems: The Museum Series (2014); Fred Wilson: Local Color (2013); Fore (2012); Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 (2012); The Bearden Project (2011-12); Spiral: Perspectives on an African American Art Collective (2011); Sculpted, Etched and Cut: Metal Works from the Permanent Collection (2011); Inside the Collection: Interiors from the Studio Museum (2010); and A Delicate Touch (2009). She has coordinated production for various Studio Museum publications and catalogs including Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 (2012); Stephen Burks: Man Made (2011); Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Any Number of Preoccupations (2011); Harlem: A Century in Images (2010); Kehinde Wiley - The Word Stage: Africa, Lagos ~ Dakar (2008); and Kori Newkirk: 1997-2007 (2007). From 2010-2014, Haynes coordinated the Museum’s Artist in Residence program. Prior to joining the Studio Museum as a curatorial assistant in 2006, Haynes was a departmental assistant at the Brooklyn Museum. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Oberlin College.

Leslie Wayne is a New York-based artist. Wayne has exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad and has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, the Buhl Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Her work is in numerous public collections, including the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Harvard University, the Portland Museum of Art, the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, The Smithsonian Museum Cooper Hewitt Library, the Neuberger Museum of Art, le Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain, La Coleccion Jumex, and La Collezione Maramotti, among others. She has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 1989.

Saya Woolfalk (Japan, 1979) is a New York based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine the world in multiple dimensions. She has exhibited at PS1/MoMA; Deitch Projects; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Brooklyn Museum; Asian Art Museum, CA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Frist Center for the Visual Arts; The Yerba Buena Center; The Newark Museum; Third Streaming; MCA San Diego; MoCA Taipei; and Performa 09; and has been written about in the New Yorker, Sculpture Magazine, Artforum, Artforum.com, ARTNews, The New York Times, Huffington Post and on Art21’s blog. Her first solo museum show The Empathics was on view at the Montclair Art Museum in the Fall of 2012.  Her second solo museum exhibition ChimaTEK Life Products was on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art in the fall 2014.  She recently completed a new video installation commission for the Seattle Art Museum, and is a 2014 recipient of a NYFA grant in Digital/Electronic Arts.  She is represented by  Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, NYC and teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Parsons: The New School for Design. 

Ian Berry is the Dayton Director of The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. Berry has organized over ninety museum exhibitions including interdisciplinary collaborations on subjects from the Hudson River to Shaker furniture, and monographic exhibitions with artists such as Terry Adkins, Nicole Eisenman, Nancy Grossman, Jim Hodges, Nina Katchadourian, Corita Kent, Nicholas Krushenick, Shahzia Sikander, Amy Sillman, Fred Tomaselli, and Kara Walker. More information is on his page.

Immediately following the Dunkerley Dialogue will be the Spring Opening Reception, celebrating the Tang’s spring exhibitions: Alma Thomas, Borrowed Light: Selections from the Jack Shear Photography Gift, Elevator Music 30: Critter and Guitari and the continuation of No Place to Hide.

Dunkerley Dialogues are generously funded by Michele Dunkerley ’80.