Conferences

Is a pioneering appraisal of Sweeney’s influential career as a museum director, curator, and critic in the United States and Ireland. Co-sponsored by the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center and the Department of Art, Art History and Art Criticism, Stony Brook University, the symposium takes place on April 25, 2008, from 10am to 5pm at Stony Brook Manhattan, 401 Park Avenue South at 28th Street, New York City. Following welcoming remarks by Anita Moskowitz, Chair, Department of Art, Stony Brook University, and Helen Harrison, Director, Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, presentations will be: “From Poet to Curator to Critic: James Johnson Sweeney, 1928-1968,” Ciar’n Bennett, 2007 Pollock-Krasner / Stony Brook Research Fellow; "Peggy Guggenheim and James Johnson Sweeney: The Making of the New York Avant-Garde," Karole P. B. Vail, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; “Sweeney from Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Connection and the Manhattan Arts Scene,” Maureen E. Mulvihill, Princeton Research Forum; “Space Explorer: James Johnson Sweeney in the Architecture of Modernism,” Raymund Ryan, Carnegie Museum of Art; “Transformational Years: James Johnson Sweeney's Tenure at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,” Lorraine A. Stuart, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The film “The Road to the Olmec Head” (b/w, 1963) will be screened, followed by the presentation “The Role of Rosc in the Internationalization of Irish Art," by Brenda Moore-McCann, independent art historian and critic.