Against All Odds: Moving in Museums

As part of the NCCAkron Creative Administration Research Summit Convening and the Keith Haring: Against All Odds exhibit currently on view at the Akron Art Museum, please join us for a Dancing Conversation between NCCAkron Executive/Artistic Director Christy Bolingbroke, Artist Brendan Fernandes, and Akron Art Museum Curator Dr. Jeff Katzin. 

The body is an ever-present theme in Keith Haring's work, inciting movement, energy, and liveness. That liveness, combined with Haring's tendency to work both inside and outside of formal sites of artistic display, resonates with dance artists.  Using this common ground, how are visual artists and choreographers dancing in and around museum spaces today?

This event is part of the Creative Administration Research (CAR) Summit Convening. Artists and Thought Partners from around the country who are participating in NCCAkron's multi-year CAR program will be in Akron for a full weekend of events. CAR is made possible through a three-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Click here to learn more about CAR.

Make sure to sign up for Umfundalai – An African Contemporary Dance Class led by Errin Weaver, Executive/Artistic Director of Mojuba! Dance Collective on Saturday, June 3. RSVP to join us for movement outdoors in The Bud and Susie Rogers Garden!

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH) is the Founding Executive/Artistic Director for the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron (NCCAkron). She is responsible for setting the curatorial vision and sustainable business model to foster research and development in dance. Previously, she served as the Deputy Director for Advancement at ODC in San Francisco, overseeing curation and performance programming as well as marketing and development organization-wide. A key aspect of her position included managing a unique three-year artist-in-residence program for dance artists, guiding and advising them in all aspects of creative development and administration. Prior to ODC, she was the Director of Marketing at the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a B.A. in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles; an M.A. in Performance Curation from Wesleyan University; and is a graduate of the Arts Management Fellowship program at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She currently serves on the Akron Civic Commons Core Team; as a consulting advisor for the Bloomberg Philanthropies Arts Innovation Management initiative; and on the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Advisory Panel. In 2017, DANCE Magazine named Bolingbroke among the national list of most influential people in dance today.

Brendan Fernandes (Chicago, IL) is an internationally recognized Canadian artist

working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Currently based out of Chicago, Brendan’s

projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective

movement. Always looking to create new spaces and new forms of agency, Brendan’s projects

take on hybrid forms: part Ballet, part queer dance hall, part political protest...always rooted in

collaboration and fostering solidarity. Brendan is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study

Program (2007) and a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship (2014). In 2010, he was

shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award and is the recipient of a prestigious 2017 Canada Council

New Chapters grant. Brendan is also the recipient of the Artadia Award (2019), a Smithsonian

Artist Research Fellowship (2020), and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant (2019). His

projects have shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennial (New York); the Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum (New York); the Museum of Modern Art (New York); The Getty Museum (Los Angeles);

the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); MAC (Montreal); among a great many others. He is

currently Assistant Professor at Northwestern University and represented by Monique Meloche

Gallery in Chicago. Recent and upcoming projects include performances and solo presentations

at the Noguchi Museum, New York, NY; The Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond, BC; The National

Gallery of Canada and new commissions with The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; The DR

Vocal Ensemble, Copenhagen, Denmark, and a new dance performance with Munch Museum,

Oslo, Norway.

Dr. Jeff Katzin is the Curator at the Akron Art Museum. He specializes in modern and contemporary art with research ranging from painting to photography, film, and video art. Jeffrey has received a certificate in Art Museum Studies from Smith College, a BA from Wesleyan University, an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where his doctoral dissertation explored the history and potential of abstract photography, with particular focus on Alvin Langdon Coburn’s Vortographs of 1916–17. Since coming to Akron Art Museum in 2019, he has curated several exhibitions, including Keith Haring: Against All Odds and Afterimages: Geometric Abstraction and Perception.

Pictured (L to R): Christy Bolingbroke (photo Neil Sapienza), Brendan Fernandes (photo Nathan Keay), and Dr. Jeff Katzin (courtesy of the Akron Art Museum).