So, What's There to do in Phoenix? (Art-Wise)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Phoenix may not be New York or San Francisco, but we've got our fair share of fun art and literature events. We'll keep you posted of these events (and more!) in our sporadically updated review "So, what's there to do in Phoenix?"

ArtEvent: F.A.R. Lectures

F.A.R (Future Arts Research) will be hosting two lectures in the coming days which are both free and open to the public (and likely filled with much brain-enhancing and arty coolness talk).

Peter Sellars will be speaking this Wednesday, October 22nd at 7 PM about the role of the arts in the new economic environment. The lecture will be hosted at the Tempe Center for the Arts. From F.A.R's newsletter:

"Peter Sellars, world-renowned director and librettist, will speak on the role of the arts in the new economic environment of crisis and uncertainty. He will discuss strategies for the arts and humanities during this period of projected strife, and about how to enter this new Depression when de-funding of the arts and humanities are almost a certainty. He will expand on the need for artists to de-institutionalize their thinking when the institutions will also be uncertain about their futures as well. Sellars' talk will concentrate on the re-imagining of the artists role through coalition building and re-thinking new institutions to accommodate the crises that surround the artist today. Sellars is an inspirational speaker who has come up with possible answers to these difficult questions."

David Elliot, director of Oxford's Museum of Modern Art from 1976 to 1996, will be lecturing at Bentley Projects in Downtown Phoenix on October 27th at 7 PM. His lecture "In Praise of Impurity: Universal Values versus Geo-aesthetics in Contemporary Art" is described in the F.A.R newsletter:

"Starting with genetic theory, research and a consideration of pre and early history, David Elliott will examine different kinds of pictorial creativity and how influence is, and always has been, spread through art and different types of cultural interchange. He will argue that it is only relatively recently that this “natural” state of affairs been disrupted by ideas of nationhood which unfortunately stressed the separateness and hierarchy of cultures. He believes that this has had disastrous historical effects and, in spite of recent theories of “globalization,” has continued, in a debased form, to the present. Elliott argues that now, as before, it is the normal and desirable state of one culture to beg, steal and borrow from other cultures. This, and the fact that all culture – even one’s own – has to be acquired, means that an openness of mind and willingness to learn are the basic tools that are needed to appreciate and enjoy what is best in the contemporary cultures of the world."

For more Phoenix literary and arts events, please visit HFR's calender.