Department of Art History’s Graduate Student Lecture Series: Britt Salvesen
When: Thursday, March 16 at 5:30PM
Where: 123 Memorial Hall
Britt Salvesen, Curator and Head, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and Prints & Drawings Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art will deliver this year’s William I. Homer Lecture, “Mapplethorpe Now” at 5:30 p.m. in 123 Memorial Hall. 
Salvesen’s talk will trace the curatorial process leading to a major Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective in 2016 — a joint project between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Getty Museum. Beginning with a historiography of Mapplethorpe scholarship from the late 1980s to today, it will discuss points at which his work has undergone major reassessment. Then Salvesen will describe the Mapplethorpe Archive, from which the 2016 exhibition was drawn, and the challenge of curating a two part retrospective. Lastly Salvesen will discuss the reception of that exhibition and the archive’s potential for generating future projects.