University at Buffalo (UB)
ART=TEXT=ART: PRIVATE LANGUAGES / PUBLIC SYSTEMS explores the advent of language in the visual arts in post-war America and the simultaneous emergence of concrete poetry. These practices embraced language’s ability to carry multiple, even contradictory meanings, thus creating a space for individual acts of anti-conformist thought. Through words in art, flirtations with ideas unauthorized by then-dominant socio-political realities were allowed expression, especially among an early generation of LGBTQ artists. This new presentation has been re-curated by graduate students Sarah JM Kolberg, Cat Dawson, and Maddie Phinney, under the direction of Jonathan D. Katz, Director of the Doctoral Program in Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo.
An online exhibition catalogue featuring images, texts, sound, and audio commentary by more than 45 contributors, including curatorial essays by Sarah JM Kolberg, Cat Dawson, Maddie Phinney, and Jonathan D. Katz, accompanies the exhibition and can be found at artequalstext.aboutdrawing.org.
Art=Text=Art was originally organized by the University of Richmond Museums, Virginia, and curated by N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director & Curator of Exhibitions, University Museums, with Rachel Nackman, Curator, Kramarsky Collection. The artworks in its current installation are drawn largely from the New York City-based Sally & Wynn Kramarsky Collection, with additional loans from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the University at Buffalo Art Galleries, and the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo.