January 28, 2022
To celebrate the publication of Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour — Frederick Douglass by Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Tang Museum, and DelMonico Books, Julien was joined by Celeste-Marie Bernier, Paul Gilroy, Cora Gilroy-Ware, Vladimir Seput, and Vron Ware at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, to discuss the enduring legacy and power of Frederick Douglass. During the program, presented in collaboration with Victoria Miro and Isaac Julien Studio, the panelists detail the scope and focuses of the book.
Lessons of the Hour — Frederick Douglass was conceived as an artwork, with sumptuously illustrated pages that depict both Isaac Julien’s artworks and the archival images, some of which have never been printed in a book before.
Lessons of the Hour — Frederick Douglass is also a reader, and it features a range of essays by the most prominent scholars on Frederick Douglass, photography, art history, cultural studies, and race and gender studies: Celeste-Marie Bernier, professor at the University of Edinburgh and author of numerous books on Douglass who worked closely with Julien on Lessons of the Hour artwork; Paul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic and the winner of the 2019 Holberg Prize for his outstanding contributions to humanities; Vron Ware, photographer and academic, author of Beyond the Pale and numerous other publications on racism and feminism; the world-renowned Henry Louis Gates, Jr., from Harvard University, the preeminent Douglass scholar and art historian; film scholars Kass Banning and Warren Crichlow, who have followed Isaac’s work since the mid-1980s, write about the aesthetics of the film installation; Susan Solt, distinguished professor and former dean of the University of California, Santa Cruz, writes about Douglass’s relationship to language, Shakespeare, and Othello; visual artist and historian of photography Deborah Willis created three special inserts throughout the book dedicated to nineteenth-century African American photographer James Presley Ball, Douglass’s relationship to photography, and his aesthetic theory; John G. Hanhardt, American film and video curator, remembers the inception of the work and its curatorial beginnings; Jonathan P. Binstock, the work’s commissioner for the Memorial Art Gallery at University of Rochester, reflects upon Douglass’s relationship to Rochester; Douglass’s great-great-great grandson, Kenneth B. Morris, Jr., made an incredibly moving text for the preface of the book; and the book concludes with an extensive interview with Julien by Jennifer A. González, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and theorist of contemporary art.
This event took place at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, on November 19, 2021
Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour — Frederick Douglass is a visual and literary meditation juxtaposing artworks by Isaac Julien with archival images of Frederick Douglass and essays that consider his enduring legacy.
Social Works II: Curated by Antwaun Sargent, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, October 7–December 16, 2021
In conjunction with the memorial service for Brice Marden held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mirabelle and Melia Marden produced a short film directed by Chiara Clemente to honor the late artist. Featuring interviews, archival photographs, and family videos, this film captures Marden’s vibrant life and enduring cultural impact.
Join Gagosian for a conversation between director, producer, and writer Sophia Heriveaux and actor, director, and writer Roger Guenveur Smith inside the exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: Made on Market Street, at Gagosian, Beverly Hills. Heriveaux and Guenveur Smith both share a personal connection to Basquiat: Heriveaux is the artist’s niece and Guenveur Smith was one of his friends and collaborators. The pair discuss Basquiat’s work and legacy, as well as his lasting impact on contemporary art and culture.
Join Brooke Holmes, professor of Classics at Princeton University, and Lissa McClure and Katarina Jerinic, executive director and collections curator, respectively, at the Woodman Family Foundation, as they discuss Francesca Woodman’s preoccupation with classical themes and archetypes, her exploration of the body as sculpture, and her engagement with allegory and metaphor in photography.
Join Vladimir Yavachev, director of operations for the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, as he discusses the genesis of the artist’s work Wrapped 1961 Volkswagen Beetle Saloon (1963–2014), which Gagosian presented at Art Basel Unlimited 2024.
In this video, Flavin Judd, the artist’s son and artistic director of Judd Foundation, discusses a historic large-scale work by his father from 1970, ahead of its presentation at Art Basel Unlimited 2024.
In this video, Gagosian presents a conversation between Jordan Wolfson and Johanna Burton, Maurice Marciano Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The pair discuss Wolfson’s animatronic work of art Body Sculpture (2023).
In conjunction with Marks and Whispers, at Gagosian, Rome, Oscar Murillo and Alessandro Rabottini sit down to discuss the artist’s paintings and works on paper in the exhibition, as well as how the show emphasizes the formal, political, and social dimensions of the color red in Murillo’s work of the last decade.
Join curator Anne Baldassari as she discusses the exhibition Simon Hantaï: Azzurro, Gagosian, Rome, and the significance of blue in the artist’s practice. The show forms part of a triptych with Gagosian’s two previous Hantaï exhibitions, LES NOIRS DU BLANC, LES BLANCS DU NOIR at Le Bourget in 2019–20, and Les blancs de la couleur, la couleur du blanc in New York, in 2022.
Jon Copes asks, What can Black History Month mean in the year 2024? He looks to a selection of scholars and artists for the answer.
Titus Kaphar and director Derek Cianfrance spoke on the opening night of Titus Kaphar Selects, a film program curated by the artist as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph in the spring of 2023. The pair discussed their respective practices, including Cianfrance’s film Blue Valentine (2010) and Kaphar’s film Exhibiting Forgiveness, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2024.
In conjunction with her exhibition The Flaying of Marsyas at Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice, Mary Weatherford discusses the featured paintings, which are directly inspired by Titian’s late, eponymous masterpiece of circa 1570–76 and reflect her enduring fascination with the painting.
Join president of the Picasso Museum, Paris, Cécile Debray; curator, writer, biographer, and historian Annie Cohen-Solal; art historian Vérane Tasseau; and Gagosian director Serena Cattaneo Adorno as they discuss A Foreigner Called Picasso. Organized in association with the Musée national Picasso–Paris and the Palais de la Porte Dorée–Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, the exhibition reframes our perception of Picasso and focuses on his status as a permanent foreigner in France.