Saturday, May 11, 2024, 2:00 pm
34 E 69th Street, Third Floor, New York, NY
On Saturday, May 11, Gallery Wendi Norris hosted a conversation between Samantha Friedman, Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, and Guillaume Kientz, Director and CEO of the Hispanic Society Museum and Library, on the art of Remedios Varo in celebration of the opening of the first exhibition dedicated to Varo’s drawings, A Visionary Line: Remedios Varo Drawings, in New York.
Remedios Varo (Spain/Mexico, 1908-1963) is best known for her virtuosic, other-wordly paintings that unite meticulous technique with surreal subject matter. Rarely exhibited, Varo’s drawings served as blueprints and psychological studies for her paintings. Taking place one floor below the exhibition A Visionary Line: Remedios Varo Drawings, the conversation between esteemed art historians will center on Varo’s technique and modes of drawing, her range of influences, and her legacy.
Samantha Friedman is Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, where she has organized or co-organized such exhibitions as Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time (2023); Cézanne Drawing (2021, with Jodi Hauptman); Degree Zero: Drawing at Midcentury (2020-21); Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern (2019, with Jodi Hauptman); Dadaglobe Reconstructed (2016, with Adrian Sudhalter); Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs (2014–15, with Jodi Hauptman and Karl Buchberg); Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration (2012); and Stage Pictures: Drawing for Performance (2009, with Jodi Hauptman). She produced a special-edition facsimile of one of Ellsworth Kelly’s sketchbooks for his 2023 centennial celebration, and is the author of Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction Blue (2022) for MoMA’s One on One series and the children’s books Matisse’s Garden (2014) and What Degas Saw (2016). She earned her bachelor’s degree in art history and English from Northwestern University, and her master’s degree in modern art history from Columbia University.
Guillaume Kientz currently serves as CEO and Director of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (HSM&L) and is spearheading the museum’s restoration and renovation efforts to bring the historic institution into the present day.
An accomplished Art Historian and Curator, Kientz does not have the typical background of one in this profession. Rather than focusing his efforts singularly on university studies, Kientz dedicated much time to experiencing cultural institutions firsthand, traveling the world and discovering interesting objects and cultures. His unique background has given him the perspective of the visitor, using this viewpoint to approach the curation of exhibitions through the lens of the institution’s audience, making the visitor his top priority. Kientz is a specialist in Spanish painting and in particular the works of El Greco, Velazquez, Ribera and Goya, as well as in European Caravaggism.
At the Louvre, where he served as a curator in the Department of Paintings for eight years with a focus on Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American painting, Kientz developed the revered exhibition Le Mexique au Louvre. Chefs-d’œuvre de la Nouvelle Espagne, XVII–XVIIIe in 2013, bringing Mexican masterpieces to the spotlight for the first time in the institution’s history.
