Joe Ketner: What is Contemporary Art?

Art historian Richard Wolheim noted that the question, What is art?, is “one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture.”

In this lecture, Joe Ketner attempts to frame the questions what is art, how does it function in our society, and what purpose does it serve by addressing some historical perspectives that can help inform the answers to these perennial questions.

From this, Joe Ketner will outline some basic characteristics of contemporary art and present some of the artists that have shaped the form and artistic practice of today (Wollheim, Richard. Art and its objects. 2nd edition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980, p. 1.).  

Joseph Ketner worked for 30 years as an art museum director and curator at the Washington University Gallery of Art, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University and the Milwaukee Art Museum, before assuming the Foster Chair in Contemporary Art at Emerson College in Boston. He specializes in European and American postwar and contemporary art, as well as 19^th century African American art.

As a museum professional Ketner curated major exhibitions of Bruce Nauman, Roxy Paine, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol that have traveled across Europe and the United States. For the past decade he has worked closely with Heinz Mack and Otto Piene of Group ZERO, producing exhibitions and public art events. He will release a book on ZERO, Witness to Phenomenon, this fall with Bloomsbury Academic Press.

At Emerson College, Ketner is also Director of the Emerson Urban Arts program and has launched a new Media Art Gallery for the College and manages public arts projects such as the three-story Paramount urban Screen.