This survey of curatorial work by Brooklyn-based arts organization Blank Forms will discuss the collaborative practice of Don and Moki Cherry; The Cricket: Black Music in Evolution, 1968–69, a magazine created by Amiri Baraka, Larry Neale, and AB Spellman; and work by Texan musician and video artist Jerry Hunt. It will also cover ongoing projects with post-minimalist composers Catherine Christer Hennix, Judith Hamann, and Sarah Hennies; and about Bowery-based sculptor Curtis Cuffie. 

This free event is part of the Fall 2022 IDS Lecture Series at The Cooper Union, organized by Leslie Hewitt and Omar Berrada. 

Blank Forms is a nonprofit organization supporting emerging and historically significant artists who produce work across disciplines, often rooted in traditions of experimental and creative music. The aim is to establish new frameworks to preserve, nurture, and present these artists’ work and to build platforms for practices underrepresented in art’s commercial, institutional, and historical fields. Blank Forms collaborates with artists on commissions, exhibitions, publications as well as archival and estate projects within contemporary cultural ecosystems and in perpetuity. In presenting and documenting this work, Blank Forms seeks to foster an artistic community founded upon engaged and equitable conversations across continents, media, and generations. 

Lawrence Kumpf is the founder and artistic director of Blank Forms. He has curated exhibitions such as “Open Plan: Cecil Taylor” (2016, with Jay Sanders) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; “Catherine Christer Hennix: Traversée du Fantasme” (2018) at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and “Jerry Hunt: Transmissions from the Pleroma” at Blank Forms, Brooklyn (2022). Ciarán Finlayson is managing editor of Blank Forms Editions. His writing has appeared in exhibition catalogs, magazines, and Journals including Artforum, Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning, and Kunst und Politik.

Any guests to campus are required to show proof of a vaccine to enter a Cooper Union Building and the Residence Hall.

The IDS public lecture series is part of the Robert Lehman Visiting Artist Program at The Cooper Union. We are grateful for major funding from the Robert Lehman Foundation. The IDS public lecture series is also made possible by generous support from the Open Society Foundations.