To arrange for speakers on the visual arts at your organization, school, art program, etc., contact Devorah Tarrow, Outreach Coordinator at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 212.777.4490. Here’s a sampling of some of the many thrilling talks that have been:
♦ School of Visual Arts / Artists Talk on Art Series: “Aesthetic Realism: The Opposites in Art and Life” — Panelists Chaim Koppelman, printmaker; Marcia Rackow, painter; Dale Laurin, architect; Ken Kimmelman, filmmaker, on their respective arts; with Moderator Carrie Wilson, art historian.
♦ Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Art-at-Lunch Series: “In Search of Strength and Grace: Two American Sculptors” by Marcia Rackow and Donita Ellison. “Do the revolutionary polished steel sculptures of David Smith and the grand, compelling wood and metal horses of Deborah Butterfield teach us something important about the drama of strength and grace in ourselves?”
♦ Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Lecture Series: “Aesthetic Realism Shows What’s Going on in American Art & In Ourselves” — Art educators Marcia Rackow and Donita Ellison discussed the work of American Realist painters from Thomas Hart Benton to Alex Katz: “Central in all realist art is the seeing that the commonplace also has grandeur.”
♦ University of the Sacred Heart [Universidad del Sagrado Corazón], San Juan: “Aesthetic Realism Explains Art & Our Lives” — Dr. Jaime Torres and Art educator Donita Ellison discussed works by Rafael Tufiño, Jack Delano, Claes Oldenburg, Duane Hanson, Chuck Close. They showed something central in realist art: that the commonplace has grandeur & meaning.
♦ Brooklyn Bridge 120th Anniversary Celebration: “The Brooklyn Bridge: A Study in Greatness” — An illustrated talk by Carrie Wilson, Terrain Gallery Coordinator, and John Stern, Senior Planner [retired] at the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, New York. They showed why this structure has been loved by millions of people all over the world.
The following InSEA talks were published in International Conversations through Art: Proceedings of the 31st InSEA World Congress, Center for Int’l Art Education, Teachers College, Columbia Univ., NY: 2003—
♦ 31st InSEA World Congress, International Society for Education in the Arts: “Aesthetic Realism, Art, and Anthropology: or, Justice to People”— Presented by Dr. Arnold Perey, anthropologist & Marcia Rackow, artist, explaining what in the human mind impels art in every culture—African, European, Polynesian—and how the study of Aesthetic Realism can change racial prejudice to respect and kindness.
♦ 31st InSEA World Congress for International Conversations through Art: Aesthetic Realism Shows How Art Answers the Questions of Your Life — Presented by Dorothy Koppelman, painter and founding Director of the Terrain Gallery, and Carrie Wilson, gallery coordinator. Based on the series at the Terrain Gallery, they showed—through a Persian manuscript, Picasso’s “Guernica,” an abstract work by Hans Hofmann — that the technical questions of art have in them the solutions to the conflicts in our lives.
♦ 31st InSEA World Congress: “The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Shows the Thrilling Structure in Common Between Art & Science” — Presented by Donita Ellison, high school art teacher, Rosemary Plumstead, science educator and Aesthetic Realism Consultant. Through demonstration lessons on how beauty is present in both prehistoric cave paintings and the anatomy of the human hand, the presenters illustrate the mighty, graceful relation of art and science.