VIRTUAL | How Can We Think of Art at a Time Like This? with Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen

Image: Marilyn Minter. Lithium, 2019.

In response to our current state of distance, ArtTable is shifting programming online where we can. This event will take place as a live conversation! Registration is required and open to all. Suggested donation of $15.00. We hope to see you there!

How to take part!

1. Click here to Register for this event
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Join ArtTable for a conversation with curators Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen on responsive online curatorial action and collaboration! Pollack and Verhallen are the co-curators of, How Can We Think of Art at a Time Like This? an online exhibition that serves as a platform for the exchange of ideas at this time of crisis. On March 14th, 2020, in quick reaction to the US’s gallery and museum closures, the two writers-curators and longtime collaborators immediately spent the weekend to kick start a group show to respond to the crisis.

“We invited artists who are considered thought leaders, artists who struggle with futuristic pessimism, political outrage and psychic melt-downs. The invited artists have responded with unbridled enthusiasm and we will be posting new artists every day for the foreseeable future.”

Click here for How can we Think of Art at Time Like This?

Barbara Pollack is the author of Brand New Art from China: A Generation on the Rise published in 2018 by I.B. Tauris.  Her first book was The Wild, Wild East: An American Art Critic’s Adventures in China, published in May 2010 by Timezone 8 Books.  She is a leading authority on Chinese contemporary art and has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions in China, also known as Summer Davos.    

Since 1994, Pollack has written extensively on contemporary Chinese art for such publications as Artnews, Art & Auction, the Village Voice, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and many others.  In addition to articles, Pollack has contributed major catalogue essays for such leading artists as Li Songsong, Lin Tianmiao, Wang Gongxin, Zhao Zhao, Sun Xun, and Tu Hongtao. Several of her essays were included in the China Art Book, published by Dumont Literatur in 2007.  

Pollack was the lead curator of many shows of Chinese contemporary art including the groundbreaking My Generation: Young Chinese Artists, the first exhibition of the 1980s generation of Chinese artists in the U.S.  which was shown at the Tampa Museum of Art and Museum Fine Arts, St. Petersburg in 2014 and traveled to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and the Orange County Museum of Art in 2015. She has also curated in China most notably Tu Hongtao: A Timely Journey, at the Long Museum West Bund in November 2018and Sun Xun:  Prediction Laboratory at Yuz Museum, also in Shanghai in 2016. In 2022, she will present Mirror Image: Changing Chinese Identity at the Asia Society Museum in New York.

Based on her research in this field, she received two grants from Asian Cultural Council in 2008 and 2016 and the prestigious Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation arts writers grant in 2008.  Additionally, Pollack is an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and frequently lectures on contemporary art at universities and museums throughout the United States and Asia.

Anne Verhallen is a New York-based curator, writer and artist agent. As director of the fine art division at CXA, she has worked on projects for many leading artists, including Kehinde Wiley, Robert Wilson, Friedrich Kunath and Lily Kwong.

Her independent curatorial projects include Virtually There, a performance conceived by Roya Sachs and Mafalda Milllies at MANA Comtemporary with collaborating artists the Compana Brothers,  Kate Gillmore and Heather Row. She also writes monthly for Arte Fuse. Born and raised in the Netherlands, Verhallen started her career as a high-fashion model working for Vogue, Hermes, Marc Jacobs, exclusively for Givenchy and with leading photographers such Inez and Vinoodh, Roe Etheridge and Daniel Jackson. Currently, as an independent curator, she seeks to cultivate the intersection between technology, design, art and health.