Each spring, as part of the 20+ year Viewpoint Lecture Series, the department hosts a pair of leading art critics or curators for lectures, critiques, and seminars during three interactions with the UT Austin campus community over the course of the semester.
This year, the UT Department of Art and Art History invites Diya Vij and Michelle White.
Diya Vij is the Curator at Creative Time, guiding the overall curatorial direction of the organization. At Creative Time, she launched CTHQ, a gathering space for art and political engagement, the R&D Fellowship for socially engaged artists, relaunched the Creative Time Summit and has realized several large-scale public art commissions. Over the past 15 years, she has sought to critically investigate the role of public art in politics and civic life through various positions held at major NYC cultural institutions including the Queens Museum, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the High Line.
Michelle White is Senior Curator at The Menil Collection, Houston, where she oversees the collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. Her current exhibition, on view now, is Tacita Dean: Blind Folly. She has organized exhibitions and published catalogs on the work of Richard Serra, Leslie Hewitt, Lee Bontecou, Vija Celmins, Claes Oldenburg Barnett Newman, Allora & Calzadilla, Roni Horn, and Mona Hatoum, among others. Later this year, she will open Robert Rauschenberg: the Fabric Works of the 1970s and a new project with filmmaker John Akomfrah.