Date: Monday, February 7, 2022
Time: 7 pm EST

This lecture will take place virtually, via Zoom. Ticket sales will end at 5 pm EST the day of the lecture. Attendees may request a video recording AFTER the lecture takes place by emailing proof of purchase to [email protected]. Video recordings are valid for 30 days after the date of the lecture.

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America is haunted. Ghosts from its violent history are an inescapable and unsettled part of our consciousness and national landscape. Not merely the realm of metaphor but present and tangible, urgently calling for contact, these otherworldly visitors have been central to our culture. Through times of mourning and trauma, artists have been integral to visualizing ghosts, whether national or personal, and in doing so have embraced the uncanny and the inexplicable. 

In this illustrated lecture, Robert Cozzolino—curator of Supernatural America, the first major exhibition to assess the spectral in American art—will explore the numerous ways American artists have made sense of their own experiences of the paranormal and the supernatural, developing a rich visual culture of the intangible.

Robert Cozzolino is Patrick and Aimee Butler Curator of Paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Some have called him the “curator of the dispossessed” for championing underrepresented artists and uncommon perspectives on well-known figures. He has curated over sixty exhibitions, including Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art, World War I and American Art, Peter Blume: Nature and Metamorphosis, David Lynch: The Unified Field, and The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World. His writing appears in a wide range of publications, including essays on artists such as Harriet Bart, Jim Denomie, Sylvia Fein, Henry Koerner, George Morrison, Elizabeth Osborne, Faith Ringgold, Peter Saul, Honoré Sharrer, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Bob Thompson, George Tooker, Ray Yoshida, Dyani White Hawk, and John Wilde. Originally trained as a musician, he has played free-improvised music as a percussionist since 1993.

Images, in order: GERTRUDE ABERCROMBIE, American, 1909–1977, Search for Rest, 1951, oil on canvas, 24 × 36 in., collection of Sandra and Bram Dijkstra, photo by Sandy and Bram Dijkstra; MACENA BARTON, American, 1901–1986, Untitled (Flying Saucers with Snakes), 1961, oil on canvas, 28 × 36 in., M. Christine Schwartz Collection, photo by Michael Tropea, Chicago, IL, © Estate of Macena Barton; AGNES PELTON, American, 1881-1961, White Fire, 1930, oil on canvas, 25 3/8 x 21 1/8 in., gift of Ed and Coreva Garman to the Raymond Jonson Collection, 82.221.1949, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque NM; AGATHA WOJCIECHOWSKY, American (born Germany), 1896–1986, AND SPIRITS, Untitled, 1963, watercolor and crayon on paper, 113⁄4 × 87/8 in., courtesy the collection of Steven day, New York, NY, photo by Steven Day; MARVIN CONE, American, 1891–1965, Anniversary, 1938, oil on canvas, 18 × 16 in., Museum purchase, Art Advancement Fund with gift of Winnifred Cone, 82.10.3, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA, © Estate of Marvin Cone