Virtual Discussion

On Lorna Simpson: A Conversation with Karen Patterson and Peter Barberie

May 1, 2020
4:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Join FWM Curator Karen Patterson and Peter Barberie, Curator of Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for an online conversation exploring the photographic work of Lorna Simpson. Learn more about the development of Spilling, Breaking Waves, an exhibition of Simpson’s work currently installed in the FWM galleries, and works selected by curator Karen Patterson highlighting the artist’s career in the 1990’s. Through discussion of works from this period—when Simpson experimented with new materials and new ways of depicting images that were purposefully absent of the female figure—find out how these explorations link back to her 1994 residency at The Fabric Workshop and Museum. While in residence, Simpson experimented with felt, half tones, and collaboration to create Standing in the water.

This program will be hosted via Zoom session; join us online with a beverage, a notepad, and a few questions to ask the curators. (Login details to be provided after registration.)

Free for FWM and PMA Members

Non-members: $5, sliding scale tickets available

IMAGE: Lorna Simpson, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Standing in the water (detail), 1994.  Pigment on wool felt, etched glass, video monitors, and audio track. Three panels: 1 1/2 x 172 x 52 inches each. Photo credit: Aaron Igler.

About the Participants

Peter Barberie is the Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Alfred Stieglitz Center, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Since 2008 he has organized more than twenty-five exhibitions, including WILD: Michael Nichols (2017), a survey of Nichols’ photography of the natural world creatively installed with art on similar themes from across the Museum’s collection; Paul Strand: Master of Modern Photography (2014), an in-depth retrospective of Strand’s photography and films that traveled to several European venues; and Zoe Strauss: Ten Years (2012), a mid-career survey of Strauss’s photography and her closely related efforts at public engagement. Most recently he completed a survey exhibition and publication about the photographer David Lebe which opened in February 2019 and received broad critical praise. His publications include Looking at Atget (2005); Dreaming in Black and White: Photography at the Julien Levy Gallery (2006); Zoe Strauss: Ten Years (2012); among others.

Karen Patterson joined the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) as their inaugural curator in July 2019. Prior to this appointment she was the Senior Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in 2012. Over the past seven years, Patterson has curated over fifty exhibitions, including major exhibitions such as Lenore Tawney: Mirror of The Universe, Ray Yoshida’s Museum of Extraordinary Values, Ebony G.Patterson: Dead Treez, among others. Her focus at JMKAC was also geared towards the curation of the Arts Center’s premier collection of folk art, self-taught art, and artist environments, work that culminated in an multi-tiered collaborative 2017 collections-based exhibitions series, The Road Less Traveled, which received praise by Hyperallergic as the year’s top exhibition. She completed her BA in folklore studies at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, and her Masters of Art Administration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Patterson has written numerous publications.