In conjunction with the current exhibition, Po Kim and Sylvia Wald: works 1957-1970, five art historians will discuss the life and work of Po Kim (born. Korea 1917; immigrated to the U.S 1955). Kim met Sylvia Wald (Philadelphia 1915-2011 New York) an artist known for printmaking, painting, drawing, sculpture, and assemblage in 1968 and married her shortly thereafter. The exhibition presents key works by each artist, primarily from the years before they met. The panel discussion will contextualize Kim's Abstract Expressionist works, beginning in 1957, when he moved to New York, until 1970 when he turned to figurative painting. Following the screening of a documentary on Po Kim, four panelists will give talks on the topics listed below. The ensuing discussion will address issues regarding Abstract Expressionism in the era of globalism, broadening the canon, and artistic partnership. A second symposium will be devoted exclusively to the work of Sylvia Wald.

Program

6:00-6:30 pm: Documentary Film on Po Kim

6:30-8:00 pm: Presentations & Panel Discussion

Hyewon Yi: Po Kim, History and Biography

Sooran Choi: Po Kim and Korean Contemporary Art in Diaspora

Stéphanie Jeanjean: Po Kim's Encounters with French Art

Marshall Price: Internationalism and the New York School

Moderator: Hyewon Yi

Panel Discussants: Mona Hadler, Marshall Price, Stéphanie Jeanjean, and Sooran Choi Symposium concept and initial organization: Eelkwon Kim

Sooran Choi is a PhD student in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She holds an MA in Art History from Hunter College and an MFA from Hong-Ik University, Seoul. Her focus is East Asian contemporary art in the light of post-colonial theory. The topic of her dissertation is Korean contemporary art in its local context, and in relation to cross-cultural issues and globalism. She has curated for Ssamzie Space and several alternative spaces in both Korea and New York City and teaches art history at Bronx Community College and Hudson County Community College.

Mona Hadler is a Professor of 20th-Century European and American Painting and Sculpture at The Graduate Center, CUNY and Brooklyn College. She has written extensively on the art of Lee Bontecou, including an essay for the Bontecou retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2004. Currently she is writing for the catalogue of the forthcoming Bontecou drawing show at the Menil Foundation in Texas. She has also published on New York art and visual culture of the fifties and sixties with essays on Abstract Expressionists William Baziotes and David Hare, as well as articles on the relationship between jazz and the visual arts, the postwar artistic response to nuclear bombings. Most recently she has written about Pontiac hood ornaments of the fifties and the Demolition Derby as a rite of destruction.

Eelkwon Kim is an initial organizer, Professor of Chonnam National University, Research Profesor of John Jay College if the City University.

Stéphanie Jeanjean earned her PhD in art history from The Graduate Center, CUNY and is a Contemporary Art scholar and independent curator specializing in French Art, Video, and New Media. She has published in Afterall Journal (London), Chronic'art and Art Press (Paris). She currently teaches Modern and Contemporary Art at Pace University and is also a regular lecturer at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Marshall N. Price earned his PhD in art history from The Graduate Center, CUNY and has written and lectured widely on American art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From 1998 to 2002 he was Assistant Curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Since 2003, he has been on the cura- torial staff of the National Academy Museum in New York where he is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Some of his recent exhibitions include The Abstract Impulse: Fifty Years of Abstraction at the National Academy (2007), George Tooker: A Retrospective (2008), a traveling exhibition organized with Robert Cozzolino, Curator, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009 (2009, co-curated with Bruce Weber), and John Cage: The Sight of Silence (2012, co-curated with Ray Kass).

Hyewon Yi earned her PhD in art history from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her chief research interests are in the history of photography and contemporary art. She teaches Art History courses at SUNY College at Old Westbury, and serves as Director and Curator of the Amelie A. Wallace Gallery since 2006 where she has curated exhibitions showcasing both emerging and mid-career contemporary artists in a wide range of media. An independent curator in New York and Seoul, she has written about contemporary art and photography. She has also served as curator and consultant for AHL Foundation, a Korean-American not-for-profit arts organization in New York.