Mays Symposium: Beauty, Art & Design
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or so they say. But how do we define beauty, and to what extent does perceived beauty—or ugliness—influence the creativity and products of artists and designers? Join our distinguished speakers for this two-day symposium as they explore the disciplines of art and design to interrogate the concept of beauty and its influence on our society.
Ticket Price: Two Day Non Members $75 | Two Day Students $25 | One Day Non Members $40 | One Day Students $15
Ticket Price Members: Two Day $50 | One Day $30
Schedule for Day 1 of the Symposium:
Doors Open: 6:00 p.m.
Lecture with Sarah Lawrence, PhD: 6:30-7:30 p.m.
Cocktail Reception: 7:30-9:00 p.m.
Sarah Lawrence, PhD, is the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Curator-in-Charge, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Prior to holding this position, Lawrence was the Dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design, and previously the Director of the MA Program in the History of Decorative Arts and Design at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. She recieved her MA and PhD from Columbia University in Renaisance art history.
As a curator and historian, Lawrence believes the key to understanding the future of design may be hidden in our pre-industrial past. “The distinction between the fine arts and the industrial arts didn’t really exist before the seventeenth century,” she says. “You wouldn’t choose between being an artist or a designer. You were understood necessarily to be both.”
Join us for her lecture entitled, “Decorative Disfunction and Functional Aesthetics.”
Schedule for Day 2 of the Symposium:
Refreshments: 8:30 a.m.
Doors Open: 9:00 a.m.
Lecture with Eleazar Hernandez: 9:30-10:30 a.m.
Panel Discussion: 10:45-12:00 p.m.
Eleazar Hernandez is the Design Executive and Founder of Creative Culture Design and Digital. He started this company with the vision of providing strategic communications solutions to companies that want to reach rapidly growing multicultural audiences. His work has been displayed at the Smithsonian Museo Alameda and recognized by LogoLounge, the American Advertising Federation, American Graphic Design Awards, and Tellys. Listed as one of the country’s top designers in Graphic Design: USA People to Watch, he recently authored his first book, Leading Creative Teams.
His lecture is titled, “Design: The Utilization of Beauty, the Creation of Desire.”
For the panel discussion, Sarah Lawrence, PhD, and Eleazar Hernandez will be joined by Stephen Burks and Andrei Pop, PhD:
Stephen Burks is the Creator and Designer of Stephen Burks Man Made Studio. Burks dedicates his work to bridging authentic craft traditions, industrial manufacturing, and contemporary design. With his New York–based studio, he has produced innovative products, furniture, lighting, and exhibitions for a range of international clients including B&B Italia, Boffi, Cappellini, Dedar, Dedon, Harry Winston, Missoni, Moroso, Parachilna, Roche Bobois and Swarovski. He won the 2015 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Product Design and is currently a 2019 Harvard Loeb Fellow.
Andrei Pop, PhD is a Associate Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, Art History, and the College of Modern Art and Aesthetics, at The University of Chicago. Pop is interested in the relationship between art and science, in dramatic and narrative art (particularly in the classical tradition), and in how modernity deals with the past. These interests intersect with others in the logic of fiction; art historiography; cartoons, comics, and caricatures; popular music and science fiction; and beauty and ugliness. In short, Pop studies various aspects of the nature of art and what role it plays in the good life and the bad.