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Free Public Opening: 'For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability'
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Join us on Free Third Thursday, September 19 from 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. for the free public opening of "For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability," the first exhibition to survey themes of illness and impairment in American art from the 1960s up to the COVID-19 era.
Enjoy free admission, a double feature screening, and more!
No reservations are required for Free Third Thursday admission.
Free Public Tour: Highlights of the Exhibition
5PM: A general tour guiding visitors through "For Dear Life," focusing on key themes and highlights of the exhibition.
Limited capacity. No RSVPs required. Meet in Browar Lobby.
Blue/ Blue Screening: Liza Sylvestre’s Blue Description Project (2024) & Moyra Davey’s Notes on Blue (2015)
5PM: Blue/ Blue Screening in Jacobs Hall
About The Blue Description Project (BDP)
The Blue Description Project (BDP) (2024) is an audio description and captioning project—produced by Crip*—Cripistemology and the Arts in collaboration with Voices in the Gallery— that engages Derek Jarman's Blue (1993) via expanded and critical accessibility. As Jarman wrote in Chroma (1994): “If I have overlooked something you hold precious—write it in the margin.” BDP takes up this invitation by creating a new, experimental iteration of Blue on the 30th anniversary of its release and Jarman’s death. The BDP iteration features creative captions and audio description that have been sourced from numerous contributors. It attempts to convey, express, engage, respond, evoke, articulate, replicate, translate, transmogrify, channel, and transcend what Blue is/was/could be. Courtesy of Artist & Sarah Hayden.
About Notes on Blue
Moyra Davey's new 28-minute video is a lyrical film essay that interweaves various biographies-including those of Derek Jarman, poet Anne Sexton, writer Jorge Luis Borges, and the artist herself-to explore blindness, color, and identity.
We encourage to come early to grab refreshments from The Kitchen before entering the museum. No RSVP needed. Entry will be first come first serve.
About the exhibition
In recent years, the art world has seen an explosion of activity confronting issues of illness and disability. Set in motion by disability justice movements of the twenty-first century, this development accelerated with the onset of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Contemporary artists with disabilities and chronic illnesses have produced influential bodies of art, often working collaboratively with peers and institutions to highlight relations of mutual dependence and negotiate practices of care. Such artists have dramatically expanded discourse about access, while reframing disability as a refusal to conform to the pace, architecture, and economic conditions of contemporary life. "For Dear Life" explores how this turn was preceded by the work of artists and activists beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. Informed by intersecting movements that included civil rights, antiwar, women’s and gay liberation, and disability rights, artists of that era approached the body—in all its variance—as a field of inquiry. This exhibition explores artistic responses to disease, disability, and forms of unruly embodiment more broadly, tracing genealogies of art that have shaped contemporary currents.
Inhabiting seven galleries at MCASD, "For Dear Life" is accompanied by a rotating program of film and video. A lavishly illustrated publication published by Marquand Books and distributed by the University of Texas Press will be available for purchase.
About PST Art
Southern California’s landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024 with more than 60 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art
"For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability" is organized by MCASD Senior Curator Jill Dawsey, PhD, and former Associate Curator Isabel Casso.
"For Dear Life" is among more than 60 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, presented by Getty. Major funding for this exhibition is provided by the Getty Foundation and The Henry Luce Foundation. Individual support for the exhibition is provided by Brook Hartzell and Tad Freese.
Financial support is also provided by the City of San Diego through the Commission for Arts and Culture.
