Inside Art: Springs, Wells, Trees and Shelters with Stanley Greenberg
The Info Commons presents Inside Art: Talks with Artists & Art Educators about Contemporary & Modern Art
Over the last 35 years, Stanley Greenberg has photographed cities, primarily New York. More recently he has photographed the intersection between nature and the built environment. He will show work from three recent projects, one of which will be published in June 2021. Springs and Wells: Manhattan and the Bronx is a rephotographic survey of the work of James Reuel Smith, who wandered around Manhattan and the Bronx on his bicycle at the turn of the 20th century. He photographed the groundwater sources that many people depended on at the time, before the city’s Croton water reached their houses (or because they preferred spring water). Smith’s pictures and descriptions of New York at the time portray, in most cases, a city unrecognizable to us now.
Greenberg will also show photographs of "corona shelters," constructed from dead twigs and branches in Prospect Park, while playgrounds were closed but the only safe activities were those done outside. Finally, he will show photographs of trees dating to Frederick Law Olmsted’s original park designs. Olmsted, along with Calvert Vaux, designed Prospect and Central Parks, and also many other urban parks around the country.
This workshop will take place online via Zoom. Please RSVP to receive the Zoom link prior to the event.
Stanley Greenberg is the author of CODEX New York, Invisible New York, and Waterworks, and the forthcoming Springs and Wells: Manhattan and the Bronx. Greenberg’s conceptual works reframe our view of the city and the nature of public space.
Greenberg's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and many other museums around the country. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the MIT Museum. Greenberg received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2005, and has also received grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Greenberg lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he was born and raised.
During the long months of quarantine, many of us found ourselves missing art: the deep encounters that surprise and move us, helping us to understand the world (or reevaluate what we think we know about it). Virtual encounters with art, while not the same as face-to-face, allow us access to art with tour guides — artists, art educators, and institutional directors who can guide us to new understandings of iconic art or introduce us to art we have never seen before. The Info Commons presents Inside Art: Talks with Artists & Art Educators about Contemporary & Modern Art, a monthly series, to take a deep dive into some NYC exhibits, to (re)examine some dominant narratives of modern art, and to explore the practice of working artists in their own words. We hope you’ll join us online.
Upcoming events:
A Meaningful Relationship with the History of Art: Kerry James Marshall
