Internationally renowned artist Kiki Smith will be the featured speaker at the annual Nasher Lecture Series on Tuesday, January 29 at 7 pm presented by the University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design. A limited number of tickets are available for $20 for Members and $25 for Non-Members at NasherSculptureCenter.org.
“The annual Nasher Lecture Series honors the legacy of the late Raymond and Patsy Nasher by bringing to Dallas some of today’s most influential artists, sculptors, and critics through this yearly collaboration with the University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design,” said Jeremy Strick, Director, Nasher Sculpture Center.
Kiki Smith, whose career has spanned over three decades, has been deemed “One of the most influential sculptors of her generation” by The New York Times. She is considered a leading figure among artists addressing philosophical, social and spiritual aspects of human nature with many of her sculptures illustrating the body—externally and internally—as the object.
“Kiki Smith creates some of the most empathetic, intimate imagistic and figurative works of our era,” said Dr. Robert Milnes, dean of the UNT College of Visual Arts and Design. “We are honored and delighted to have her participate in our college’s Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Lecture Series and very much look forward to her interaction with our students on campus and her public remarks in Dallas the next day!”
Smith has realized several public commissions including Chorus, 2012, a major installation in The Last Lot project space (46th Street and Eighth Avenue) in New York City, presented by the Art Production Fund. She has also designed in collaboration with architect Deborah Gans a monumental permanent stained glass window for the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, a National Historic Landmark located on New York’s Lower East Side, unveiled in 2010.
Since 1979, Kiki Smith has been the subject of more than 150 solo exhibitions internationally, including a major travelling exhibition that originated in Museum Haus Esters, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany and travelled to three venues in Europe and the United States from 2008 to 2010. Smith’s work has been included multiple times in the Whitney Biennial (1991, 1993, 2002); La Biennale di Firenze (1996-1997; 1998); and La Biennale di Venezia (1993, 1999, 2005, 2009), where in 2011, she participated in the group exhibition Glasstress at the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti (June 4–November 27, 2011). Her work is held in more than fifty important public collections internationally.
Smith’s many accolades include the Theo Westenberger Women of Excellence Award (2010); Nelson A. Rockefeller Award, Purchase College School of the Arts (2010); Women in the Arts Award, Brooklyn Museum (2009); 50th Edward MacDowell Medal (2009); Medal Award, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2006); Athena Award for Excellence in Printmaking, Rhode Island School of Design (2006), and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2000). Smith was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. In 2006 TIME Magazine named her one of the “TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World.” Kiki Smith lives and works in New York City.
The lecture is sponsored by the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Series in Contemporary Sculpture and Criticism, endowed at UNT by Nancy A. Nasher, David H. Haemisegger and grandchildren.
