SI’s multigenerational class, Contemporary Art Topics (CAT), began in 2018 in partnership with the Educational Alliance Sirovich Center, a nearby center for older adults in the East Village. During the pandemic, SI embarked upon a new opportunity to engage adults of all ages, and connect the older adult students from Sirovich to a wider community through multigenerational classes.
Open to adults of all ages, SI’s Contemporary Art Topics program is a unique discussion-based course designed to investigate current themes and issues being explored by living artists today. Thematically-based and artist-led, these two-hour classes introduce concepts and ideas in contemporary art through lectures, guest artist talks, class discussions, “slow looking” at art, individual and group activities, as well as opportunities to share student artwork.
Past program topics have included: the four elements in contemporary art, contemporary artists creating urban space interventions, regenerative life cycles in art making, materials and processes, use of color in contemporary art practice, history of color materiality, wandering as art, craft and folk arts, ritual in art, and the intersection of art and ecology.
Summer 2024 Contemporary Art Topics Class | Today’s Special
Food and art have always been intertwined. In the Stone Age, cave painters used vegetable juice and animal fat as paint ingredients and during the Renaissance, Dutch and Flemish masters were known for their lavish still-life paintings. In the modern era, it was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who took food as art to a new territory with his 1932 Futurist Cookbook. Since then, artists have turned the idea of a recipe on its head, created sensory performances using food, opened restaurants as sites of cultural reflection, and facilitated cooking sessions in galleries, museums, and public spaces. In this course, we will explore the work of contemporary artists who use food as tool and metaphor to question the political, social, and economic dimensions of what we eat and how we eat it.
Each class includes dynamic lectures, lively discussions, slow-looking at art, individual and group activities, and opportunities to share student artwork. This 5-session course aims to center BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and multigenerational artists from various backgrounds and mediums.
4 sessions will be virtual on Friday mornings, and 1 session will be an in-person field trip in NYC for local students.
Program Dates: July 19, July 26, August 2, August 9, and August 10 (Saturday trip)
CAT is always free!
Registration is now open. To register, fill out this form!
This class is facilitated by Teaching Artist, Gabriela López Dena.
If you have any questions, please email education@swissinstitute.net.