Fly in the Buttermilk of the Contemporary Art World

media release: Sur Rodney Sur: Fly in the Buttermilk of the Contemporary Art World Lecture

Thursday, March 23 @ 5pm CST

Location: Elvehjem L140, 800 University Ave, Madison, WI

Online: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/94770627236

Archiving Your Art Works Workshop

Friday, March 24 @ 12pm CST

Location: University Club Rm 212, 432 East Campus Mall, Madison, WI

RSVP: cvc@mailplus.wisc.edu

Enigmatically recognized as an artistic collaborator, curator, writer, archivist and community archivist —Sur Rodney (Sur) is most renowned for his former position as co-director of the East Village landmark Gracie Mansion Gallery from 1983-1988 . During the early to mid 1990s he served as a curator and archivist at Kenkeleba House, a Lower Manhattan African-American art institution, and was hired to archive the New School University’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics contemporary art collection, visible in all their campus buildings. His work with artists estates, many at cause to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, led him to serve on the board of Visual AIDS, beginning in 1994, and help establish the Frank Moore Archive Project to assist artists with HIV/AIDS, and their estates. The archive is used as a resource for curators, publishing and launching exhibition projects while also providing a monthly on-line web gallery by invited curators internationally. Sur is currently editing a collection of writings on his experiences with the New York art world that begin in 1972. He manages the studio of African American conceptual artist/writer Lorraine O’Grady, he has archived the work of his photographer father for the Special Collections at Concordia University in Montreal and is creating the Cloudsmith Archive of his late spouse of 23 years, the Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks.