Join exhibiting artist Laura Letinsky for an in-gallery conversation about her work that is currently on display in the Smart Museum of Art’s group exhibition Smart to the Core: Medium / Image.

Although Laura Letinsky depicts the remnants of a meal in her displayed archival pigment print, Untitled #37, the medium of her work communicates something very different. Her subtle combination of magazine cutouts and images snipped from photographs including her own, along with occasional actual objects on this tablescape defamiliarizes the medium of a photograph, underlining the gap between the present image and the absent object it represents.

The artist will discuss her work in the context of the exhibition and her artistic practice followed by a Q&A session.

FREE, but space is limited for this in-person event. Please register in advance.

This exhibition and related programs are organized by the Smart Museum’s Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry. 

About the artist

A BFA from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, and an MFA in Photography from Yale University’s School of Art, Laura Letinsky has been a Professor at the University of Chicago since 1994.  She shows with Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City and Document in Chicago, and exhibits internationally including venues such as PhotoEspana in Madrid, the Israeli International Photography Festival, Mumbai Photography Festival in India, MIT in Cambridge, Basel Design, The Photographers Gallery in London, and the Denver Art Museum in Colorado.  

Awards include the Canada Council International Residency, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, The Canada Council Project Grants, The Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Letinsky’s work is published in monographs and catalogues such as To Want For Nothing (Roman Nvmerals, 2019), Time’s Assignation (Radius Books, 2017), Ill Form and Void Full (Radius Books, 2014), Feast (Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago Press, 2013), After All (Damiani, 2010), Hardly More Than Ever (Renaissance Society, 2004), Blink (Phaidon Press, 2002), and Venus Inferred (University of Chicago Press, 2000). 

Image
Laura Letinsky, Untitled #37, 2012, Framed: 54 13/16 x 44 15/16 x 2 1/4 in. (139.2 x 114.1 x 5.7 cm), Archival pigment print on Hanemuhle paper. Commission, Smart Museum of Art, Gift of the Artist. © 2013 Laura Letinsky. 

Laura Letinsky, Courtesy of the artist.