Summer Summits 2018
Summer Summits is a series of casual outdoor gatherings on the terrace at the Carpenter Center organized around informal slideshow presentations by area artists, curators, museum directors, designers, and others.
Thu, July 12
Mark Lee, Chair of the Department of Architecture, at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design
Pedro Alonzo, Independent Curator
Thu, Jul 26
Ellen Tani, Assistant Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston
Martha Tedeschi, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director, Harvard Art Museums
Taking the form of personal travelogues and behind the scenes research and influences, two presenters each share inspiring moments and places–dealing with art or not–experienced during travel near and far. Summer Summits is an occasion to enjoy long summer evenings with conversation, drinks, desserts, and music with our community on Le Corbusier’s beautiful terrace.
Evenings begin at 7:30 pm, with slideshows starting promptly at 8 pm, each lasting about 20 minutes. While limited refreshments and desserts are provided, guests may also bring their own wine and beer. Free and open to the public.
Mark Lee
Mark Lee is the incoming Chair of the Department of Architecture, at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design . Lee is a principal and founding partner of the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee. Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 30 major awards. A book on the work of the firm, entitled HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE IS A HOUSE, was published by Birkhauser in 2016. This followed a monograph on the firm’s work, published in 2014 by 2G. Mark has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Technical University of Berlin, and ETH Zurich. He has held the Cullinan Chair at Rice University and the Frank Gehry International Chair at the University of Toronto. Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning seven countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects include the Menil Drawing Institute, on the campus of the Menil Collection, scheduled to open in 2018; a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, completed in September 2017; and the new UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California.The firm’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Menil Collection, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Architecture Museum of TU Munich.Together with partner Sharon Johnston, Mark Lee was the Artistic Director for the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Ellen Y. Tani
Ellen Y. Tani, PhD is Assistant Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. She earned her PhD in art history from Stanford University in 2015. Her research interests include modern and contemporary American art, black studies, conceptual art, and the intersection of critical race theory and visual culture. In her prior role as the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, she taught college classes with the museum’s permanent collection and organized several large-scale exhibitions, including Second Sight: The Paradox of Vision in Contemporary Art in 2018, which explored the political and creative opportunities of the nonvisual in recent art practice. Her previous curatorial work includes projects at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History. Her essays and exhibition reviews have appeared in American Quarterly, Art Practical, Apricota Journal, Temporary Art Review, and The Chart, in addition to exhibition monographs on Senga Nengudi and Charles Gaines. Her research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Asian Contemporary Arts Consortium, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African American Studies at the University of Virginia. Tani’s current book project examines the intersection of race and conceptual art in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
