2024-2025
From left to right: Dr. Ying-chen Peng, Jeff Kelley, Dr. Mia Yinxing, Dr. Dorothy Moss.
A Conversation on Hung Liu: Happy and Gay & Exhibition Catalogue Launch
Featuring panelists Dr. Mia Yinxing Liu, Dr. Ying-chen Peng, and Jeff Kelley
Moderated by Dr. Dorothy Moss
Tuesday, March 18 | 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Light refreshments will be served
Join Georgetown University Art Galleries for a panel discussion on Hung Liu: Happy and Gay, currently on view in the de la Cruz Gallery. The conversation will feature leading scholars in Chinese art history: Dr. Mia Yinxing Liu of Johns Hopkins University, a scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese art and media culture, and Dr. Ying-chen Peng of American University, specializing in late imperial and modern Chinese art with a focus on gender and material culture. They will be joined by Jeff Kelley, art critic, author, curator, and husband of the late Hung Liu.
Dr. Dorothy Moss, former Smithsonian curator, distinguished art historian, and inaugural Director of the Hung Liu Estate, will moderate the discussion. Moss, who curated Liu’s 2021 retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, also curated Hung Liu: Happy and Gay alongside the students of her Graduate-level Curatorial Studies seminar at Georgetown.
The event will serve as the official launch of the exhibition catalogue, featuring contributions from Ying-chen Peng, Jeff Kelley, and the Georgetown graduate student-curators: Brett Everette Adams, Cindy Chen, Hannah Cunningham, Clare Daly, Catie Higgins, Amanda Jones, Rosa Manuel, Ali Mills, Sara Miller, Maia Perry, Sambhavi Sinha, Morgan Stevenson-Swadling, and Kaitlyn Wood.
Hung Liu: Happy & Gay is generously supported by Maria and Alberto de la Cruz and the Hung Liu Estate.
Great Women Writers
Bilingual Lightning Readings
Thursday, March 27 | 6:15 - 8:00 PM
Light refreshments will be served
In celebration of Women's History Month, Georgetown University Art Galleries will host an evening of bilingual lightning readings of women's writing from across the globe. Short texts that reflect on the theme of utopia/dystopia will be read by students and faculty from the Faculty of Literatures, Cultures, and Language Studies at Georgetown. Poetry, prose, essays, and other texts written by women writers from across history and geography will be read in the English translation and the following original languages: German, Greek, Korean, Persian, Russian and Turkish. This year, the event will also feature a special guest: the displaced Ukrainian poet Ekaterina Derysheva, who will read from her own work. Audience-choice awards and a light reception will follow.
The event is sponsored by The Faculty of Literatures, Cultures, and Language Studies, the Program in Women's and Gender Studies, the Department of Slavic Languages, the Persian Studies Program, and the Georgetown University Art Galleries.
Hung Liu, Street Library, 2013. Oil on canvas, wood shelf, and Chinese picture story books. 60 x 80 in. Courtesy of private collection.
Spring 2025 Exhibitions Opening Reception
Join Georgetown University Art Galleries on Friday, January 17th from 6-8 pm for an Opening Reception to celebrate our Spring 2025 exhibitions: Hung Liu: Happy and Gay and &Loving: Photography from the Georgetown Collection. Enjoy live music and light refreshments. This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited. RSVP here.
Fall 2024 Closing Reception with Michael Rakowitz
In-Gallery Book Reading and Conversation with the Artist
December 3, 2024 | 6:00–8:00 PM
de la Cruz Art Gallery
Refreshments sponsored by Falafel, Inc.
Join us and artist Michael Rakowitz for the Closing Reception of Around the Table where Rakowitz will read from his book A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve, followed by a discussion of his artwork series Dar Al Sulh (Domain of Conciliation).
Cookbook Club at Bold Fork Books with Michael Rakowitz
December 4, 2024 | 7:00 PM
Bold Fork Books | 3064 Mt. Pleasant St. NW
Join Bold Fork Books and artist Michael Rakowitz for an intimate program where participants are invited to bring homemade dishes from Rakowitz’s book A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve for this potluck-style gathering.
Having It All; The Politics of Parenthood
A Durational Performance by Emma Jaster
November 14, 2024 | 12:00–2:00 PM
Spagnuolo Gallery
Presented in partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics at Georgetown University, in conjunction with Alex McQuilkin: That Hand-Touch Sensibility
Meet Emma Jaster, a freshly postpartum mother, accompanied by her newborn child, as she uses song, dance, stories, and open discussions with the audience to work through the challenges and joys of Having It All. In the performance, Jaster will explore ideas of mothering at home, leaving the capital workforce, having a career, and building one’s own adventure.
This performance is inspired by, and presented in conjunction with, the exhibition Alex McQuilkin: That Hand-Touch Sensibility, where McQuilkin created works following the birth of her second child. Light refreshments provided. Due to the durational nature of the program, entry is encouraged on the beginning of every half-hour to view the full performance. RSVP not required.
We Should Talk: Around the Table
Philippa Pham Hughes in collaboration with Thu Anh Nguyen
As part of the social convenings for the Around the Table exhibition, social practice artist Philippa Pham Hughes has organized
three intimate and invitation-only conversations around meals, centered on featured artworks by Jennifer Wen Ma, Jo Smail, and Helen Zughaib. While Ma’s site-specific installation, BElonging engages the theme of belonging and empathy, Smail’s Collaged Constructions and Zughaib’s Eat the News confront us with the continuous social and racial inequalities, and the ongoing war conflicts resulting in vast displacements of civilians and devastating humanitarian crises.
At the conclusion of each evening’s discussion, Hughes’ collaborator, poet-artist Thu Anh Nguyen, writes a poem that embodies the conversation by turning the words of the participants into lyrical verse. In the spirit of the exhibition—to spark earnest discussions and collective engagement—the poems can be viewed by QR code in the gallery or here.
Images: Hung Liu, Happy and Gay: Boy With Kite (details), 2012. Oil on canvas with metal star. 60 x 48 x 2 in. Courtesy of Hung Liu Estate. Headshot courtesy of Sheldon Scott.
let’s sing, let’s dance
A Performance by Sheldon Scott
Wednesday, April 9 | 5:30 - 7:30 PM
Light refreshments will be served
Join Georgetown University Art Galleries for a special meditative performance by renowned artist Sheldon Scott (b. 1976, Pawley’s Island, SC) inside the Maria & Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery. This program is presented in conjunction with Hung Liu: Happy and Gay.
let’s sing, let’s dance will be a ceremony of story, song, riddle and curricula, prompting viewers to draw parallels between ideas in the exhibition with contemporary American early childhood teachings. Built on the ceremony of subversion, Scott will create an opportunity for empathy and resilience building. Audience members are encouraged to spend as much time as they would like with the work during the two-hour duration.
Sheldon Scott’s practice mines from his experiences growing up in the Gullah/Geechee South and professional background in storytelling to examine the Black male form with particular emphasis on biases of usability and expendability in relation to constructs of race, economics, and sexuality. A finalist for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's Outwin-Boochever Portrait Competition, Scott’s work is held in esteemed collections, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Nasher Museum of Art.
This event is presented in partnership with Georgetown University Departments: American Studies, Black Studies, Culture and Politics, The Department of Performing Arts, The Gender + Justice Initiative, Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) Arts Week, Georgetown Humanities Initiative, The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, The Lecture Fund, and Women and Gender Studies.
Hung Liu: Happy & Gay is generously supported by Maria and Alberto de la Cruz and the Hung Liu Estate.