THE WEALTH OF NATIONS
A Lecture by Bruce Linn
October 25 Monday Essc 255
2:00pm-2:50pm
Bruce Linn is an artist and curator. His lecture, “The Wealth of Nations,” is an entertaining, straightforward narrative. It goes into detail about his work as an artist and as an art curator, and how they inform each other. Linn argues that his work in the studio as an artist has created a high-level of self-knowledge, connoisseurship, and keen intuitions, and has led to insights on how people use material culture to reflect their values. The lecture tells the story of the steps involved in pulling together recent exhibitions he’s curated, what the goals were he had in mind, and how these exhibitions affected his work as an artist. His recent curatorial projects include "ReSOURCE: Artists who use collecting to create or inspire their work" and "The Death of Painting Is Dead.” The most recent exhibition of his own paintings was called “Aesthetic Refugees,” which included images of suitcases and arks containing the objects we hope to save as lasting reminders of ourselves, both, as individuals and collectively as cultures. Linn has been awarded a 2009 Al Smith Fellowship in recognition of artistic excellence for professional artists in Kentucky through the Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, which is supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. He received his M.F.A. and B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently moving to Los Angeles, California.
