SI’s multigenerational class, Contemporary Art Topics (CAT), began in 2018 in partnership with the Educational Alliance Sirovich Center, a nearby center for older adults in the East Village. During the pandemic, SI embarked upon a new opportunity to engage adults of all ages, and connect the older adult students from Sirovich to a wider community through multigenerational classes.
Open to adults of all ages (18+), SI’s Contemporary Art Topics program is a unique discussion-based course designed to investigate current themes and issues being explored by living artists today. Thematically-based and artist-led, these two-hour classes introduce concepts and ideas in contemporary art through lectures, guest artist talks, class discussions, “slow looking” at art, individual and group activities, as well as opportunities to share student artwork.
Past program topics have included: the four elements in contemporary art, contemporary artists creating urban space interventions, regenerative life cycles in art making, materials and processes, use of color in contemporary art practice, history of color materiality and symbolism, wandering as art, craft and folk arts, ritual in art, the intersection of art and ecology, and art as food/food as art.
Winter/Spring 2025 Contemporary Art Topics Class | Red and Black: Symbols, Language, and the Stories We Tell
The colors red and black are the first to be given names in almost every language since recorded history. What is it about these colors that people across time and place connect with so strongly? Are we drawn to red because it is the color of our blood? Or because it is the universal color of emergency, and how we call attention to things? Why do we associate the color black, in all its richness and chromatic potential, with mystery and the unknown? In this iteration of Swiss Institute’s Contemporary Art Topics series, Red and Black: Symbols, Language, and the Stories We Tell, we will investigate color symbolism by focusing on two colors, red and black. We will learn about each color’s origins as a physical material, as well as look at both historic and contemporary artists that address their unique qualities and implications in their work. Each class will explore a variety of related themes, including identity, narrative, power, and language. In parallel with our study of the color red, arguably the most ostentatious of colors, we will stipulate that the color black has a home in the rainbow, and ponder its own unique spectrum and the wealth of meaning it can hold. From the acknowledgement of polychromy, an original hallmark of classical sculpture, to the use of black in paintings by Kerry James Marshall, we will attempt to adapt the ways our eyes see color in all its nuanced forms.
We will look at contemporary artists such as Kenneth Anger, Barbara Chase-Riboud, On Kawara, Dawoud Bey, Porfirio Gutierrez, Carmen Agote, Edgar Heap of Birds, among many others.
This course aims to center BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and multigenerational artists from various backgrounds and mediums. It includes lectures, guest artist talks, class discussions, “slow looking” at art, individual and group activities, as well as opportunities to share student artwork.
Classes will meet between February 27 and April 17, 2025 for 8 virtual sessions, plus 2 in-person trip days in NYC for local students.
CAT is always free!
This class is facilitated by artist and SI Lead Educator, Julia Norton.
Registration for Winter/Spring 2025 is now closed. Details for Summer 2025 will be live late spring.
If you have any questions, please email education@swissinstitute.net.