Helen Clark Berlind Symposium begins Friday

The Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College will host the 23rd annual Helen Clark Berlind Symposium this weekend.

Nick Brandt, Elephant Walking Through Grass, Amboseli, 2008, archival pigment print, 40 in. x 73 in., edition of 8. ©Nick Brandt, Courtesy of the Artist and Hasted Kraeutler, NYC

Each fall, the symposium brings together artists and scholars to discuss the themes expressed in the College’s annual exhibition. The 103rd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art, A Menagerie of Metaphors, focuses on animal imagery.

The symposium will begin Friday at 8 p.m. with a poetry reading by Tom Sleigh, an art critic and poet. Jenny Lynn McNutt, an artist with paintings and sculptures in the exhibition, will present a talk at 11 a.m. Saturday. At 1:30 p.m., Kathy Muehlemann, a Randolph art professor and curator of the exhibition, will moderate a panel discussion featuring Sleigh, McNutt, and Randolph philosophy professor David Schwartz. Schwartz is the Mary Frances Williams Chair in Humanities and the author of Art, Education, and the Democratic Commitment: A Defense of State Support for the Arts.

For a full schedule and more information, visit the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College website.

The Berlind Symposium was established by friends and family of Helen Clark Berlind ’58 to honor her memory on the occasion of Randolph College’s 80th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art. Every year since, the Symposium has expanded and extended the educational significance of the Annual Exhibition, hosting scholars and artists to discuss issues relevant to each exhibition.