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21st Annual Critics’ Residency

For Immediate Release: April 25, 2007

For more information contact:
Julie Ann Cavnor 410-962-8565 / jcavnor@mdartplace.org

21st Annual Critics’ Residency
Art Today in Words and Images

Public Forum: 2 pm, Saturday, May 5, 2007

Baltimore, Maryland—MAP’s Critics’ Residency program turned twenty-one this year and continues to play a significant role in fostering the collaborative relationship shared between artists and writers. Taking place throughout the course of one year, the Critics’ Residency program culminates with an exhibition, a catalogue and a public forum scheduled for Saturday, May 5, 2007 at 2 pm, followed by a reception at 3 pm.

The forum will be moderated by Cornel Rubino, a regarded artist whose knowledge of contemporary art will serve to encourage valuable discourse amongst program participants and audience members. The forum will address issues surrounding contemporary art on both a regional and national level.

Critics Eleanor Heartney and Irving Sandler, curated Art Today in Words and Images, which features the work of artists: Alzaruba, Anne Chan, Breon Gilleran, Maren Hassinger, Maria Karametou, Ben Piwowar, Sofia Silva and Mary Walker. Writers Al Miner and Ding Ren were mentored by the critics as they completed critical writing pieces about artists’ work in the exhibition. Their writing, along with the critics’ contributions will be featured in the catalogue.

About this year’s critics:

Eleanor Heartney is a Contributing Editor for Art in America and Artpress and received the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism in 1992. Her books include: Critical Condition: American Culture at the Crossroads (1997), Postmodernism (2001), Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art (2004), and Defending Complexity: Art, Politics and the New World Order (2006.) Heartney is currently working on a survey of contemporary art from the 1980s to the present, which will be published by Phaidon in 2007.

Irving Sandler has been called the premiere art critic of our time, having maintained a fervent engagement with contemporary artists and a keen understanding of the inner workings of the art world for more than fifty years. In 1954, Sandler began taking notes of conversations with artists during informal gatherings at the Club, the Cedar Street Tavern, or in artists' studios in New York.  Soon after, he became the Director of the Tanager Gallery, the Program Chair for the Artists' Club, and a reviewer for Art News and Art International, establishing two roles that he would continue for the rest of his career: supporter of emergent artist groups, and advocate critic. A third role, that of professor, emerged in the 1960s. In 1972 Sandler organized Artist’s Space, one of the first alternative exhibition spaces for young artists in New York. A selection of Sandler’s books include: The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism (1970); The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties (1978); American Art of the 1960s (1988); and Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s (1996).His most recent book,A Sweeper-Up After Artists: A Memoir was published in 2004.

Maryland Art Place (MAP) is a not-for- profit center for contemporary art established in 1981 to: develop and maintain a dynamic environment for regional artists to exhibit their work, nurture and promote new ideas and new forms, and facilitate rewarding exchanges between artists and the public through educational leadership. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm. There is no admission charge to enter the gallery or to participate in MAP’s regular programming.