MEDIA CONTACT: Judy Moore at (847) 491-4819 or jkm229@northwestern.edu

February 24, 2004

Artist Lorna Simpson to Talk at Block Museum

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Contemporary artist Lorna Simpson will discuss the current state of her work and the issues she explores through her films and videos at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art.

Her talk, “Breaking Barriers: A Discussion with Lorna Simpson,” at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 18, at the Block Museum, 40 Arts Circle Drive, will be followed by a panel discussion. The talk and discussion are being held in conjunction with her installation “Lorna Simpson: 31,” on view in the museum’s Alsdorf Gallery through March 28.

The panel discussion that follows Simpson’s March 18 talk will be led by artist and Northwestern faculty member Ed Paschke. Panelists will include Hamza Walker, director of education for the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Dawoud Bey, a Chicago-based photographer; and art dealer Rhona Hoffman, owner of the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago and Simpson’s local art representative.

Support for this program is provided by the Myers Foundations, the University’s departments of African American studies and of radio/tv/film, and the Program in the Study of Imagination.

The “Lorna Simpson: 31” installation is a grid of 31 small video screens that track a month in the life of an unknown woman as she moves through her apartment, the street, the office and various recreational spaces. Despite being circumscribed by her daily routine, Simpson’s unknown woman is not always where we expect her to be.

Simpson, who has received numerous awards and grants, has been challenging gender and racial stereotypes in her artwork since the 1980s, and this installation exposes the regulated structures of social space by which all our lives are governed. The detailed study of a woman’s daily life evokes both Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Two or Three Things I Know About Her” and Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.”

Simpson’s work has been exhibited internationally at leading museums and galleries in Mexico City, Ireland, Spain, Canada, Japan, Austria and Germany and throughout the United States.

For more information, contact Burke Patten at (847) 467-4602 or bpatten@northwestern.edu. Admission to the March 18 talk and panel discussion is free. Since space is limited, reservations are encouraged. To make a reservation, call (847) 491-4852.