Award-Winning Artist Lorna Simpson Lectures at Bennington College

February 28, 2006

Noted contemporary visual artist Lorna Simpson has been named Bennington College’s 2006 Adams–Tillim lecturer. Simpson will visit the campus and deliver a lecture on Wednesday, March 8, 2006, at 7:30 pm in Tishman Lecture Hall. This event is free and open to the public.

Simpson broke ground in 1993 as the first African-American woman included in the Venice Biennale and the first to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Well known for her consistent artistic dialogue relating to race and gender stereotypes in America, she often depicts African-American women in varying photographic mediums. While her focus remains largely the same, Simpson consistently reinvents her art by manipulating print techniques and scale, and incorporating non-traditional materials such as felt, Plexiglas, and fragments of text.

Her work explores the relationship between what the viewer sees and what the viewer expects to find. Simpson explains, “I don't like to give viewers what they expect in a typical photograph. I like to let them fill in the gaps.”

Simpson’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at major museums throughout the U.S. and internationally. Most recently, the American Federation of the Arts has organized solo exhibition that offers a mid-career survey of Simpson’s work to date and provides a comprehensive examination of her photographs and films. The exhibition will travel throughout 2006 to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Gibbes Museum, Charleston, SC.

The Adams–Tillim Lecture was established in 1992 by alumnus David Beitzel MFA ’83, in honor of two retired visual arts faculty members, Pat Adams and the late Sidney Tillim. Adams and Tillim both taught at Bennington College for nearly 30 years.

For further information, please contact 802-440-4549.