Jean-Michel Basquiat is Topic of New Canaan Library’s Stoddard Art Lecture, Delivered by Professor Jordana Moore Saggese

New Canaan Library’s 11th Stoddard Art Lecture welcomes author and professor Jordana Moore Saggese, an internationally recognized expert on the work of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. Professor Saggese will speak about his life and work through the lens of her most recently published book, The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader. The live webinar will take place on Tuesday, November 16, at 7 PM EST. Please register online by clicking on the event on the Library’s Events Calendar. Zoom sign in information will be provided upon registration.
The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader is the first comprehensive sourcebook on the artist, closing gaps that have until now limited the sustained study and definitive archiving of his work and its impact. Professor Saggese will discuss her book, the result of more than two decades of work on this iconic American artist.
Eight years after his first exhibition, Basquiat was dead, but his popularity has only grown. Through a combination of interviews with the artist, criticism from the artist’s lifetime and immediately after, previously unpublished research by the author, and a selection of the most important critical essays on the artist’s work, this collection provides a full picture of the artist’s views on art and culture, his working process, and the critical significance of his work both then and now.
Jordana Moore Saggese is an Associate Professor of American Art at the University of Maryland, College Park and the former Editor-in-Chief of the College Art Association’s Art Journal. She was previously Associate Professor of Contemporary Art & Theory at California College of the Arts. Trained as an art historian, Saggese’s work focuses on modern and contemporary American art with an emphasis on the expressions and theorizations of blackness. She is an internationally recognized expert on the work of the American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88). The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses was published in March 2021 by the University of California Press.

The Stoddard Art Lecture series was established in the fall of 2011 to enrich and broaden the community’s understanding and enjoyment of the visual arts in all its forms. The Stoddard Lecture is unique in that it is endowed; once the fund reaches a certain point from contributions the series will operate in perpetuity. It is indeed a lasting gift, honoring lifelong learners, benefiting others, and improving the Library.