What’s on the Wall of Our Museums…and How it All Got There with Shane McAdams

Concept

Most art appreciators can agree on the world's great museums of record - the Tate, MoMA, the Hammer, the Guggenheim - even if they can't agree on the nature of the art within them. Yet few could explain how those modern and contemporary collections came to be. Do those curated decisions reflect our tastes, or do they create them? Are museums documentarians, custodians, or authors of history? These are fascinating questions wrapped around an even more fascinating - and deliberately murky - story. Today, pressures from outside the walls of traditional institutions are shaking the foundations of the art world. What does this mean for artists moving forward? For regional art centers long overshadowed by Berlin, London, and New York? This talk sheds light on some of that obscurity, explores how conditions are changing, and considers what these shifts might mean for individual practices and participation. It also invites discussion - and a bit of tea leaf reading - about what the future might hold.

Instructor

Shane McAdams is an artist, writer, curator, educator, and papa. His artwork has been exhibited at Allegra LaViola Gallery, Marlborough Gallery, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, the Haggerty Museum of Art, John Michael Kohler Art Center, and many other venues. His work has been reviewed by Vogue Magazine, the New York Times, the New York Observer, Huffington Post, and the Village Voice. He has taught at Rhode Island School of Design and Marian University. Shane is a three-time Creative Capital, Andy Warhol Foundation Writer's Grant finalist. His writing appeared regularly in the Brooklyn Rail from 2002 to 2012. He has also contributed to the Milwaukee Journey Sentinel and Shepherd Express, for which he received the the Visual Arts Achievement in the Arts Writing from the Wisconsin of Arts and Letters. In addition to writing and painting, Shane is also a co-partner in REAL TINSEL, an art space on the southside of Milwaukee and co-founder of Door County Contemporary, a three-day annual art fair in Fish Creek.

An accomplished artist, educator, and curator, Shane McAdams understands not every student is pursuing a single, universal goal. Considering what each student needs, he adjusts his instruction accordingly; a balance of wisdom, playfulness, craft, and control and experimentation. When not making work, he is writing about it, hanging it, reading about it, or supervising the making of it with his two children. Shane holds an MFA from Pratt Institute, owns the gallery REAL TINSEL on the southside of Milwaukee, and is an active writer, curator, and educator.