Please join HSS on Tuesday, November 19th from 12:15 to 1:50 PM in the Cooper Union Library for a Faculty Focus with Adjunct Assistant Professor Robin Simpson.

In this presentation, Professor Simpson will discuss heat as a subject and medium in art through the early modern period to the present day. This work is spurred by the ongoing climate activism campaign targeting flagship artworks in primarily European public collections. Professor Simpson examines the correlation between heat, fatigue, and class, and its dual, parallel representation through the early modern to contemporary eras.

Robin Simpson is an art historian, educator, and curator. As a researcher they focus on Canadian, American, and South Asian contexts from the mid-twentieth century to present. They have investigated the intersections of clinical and critical discourse in early video art; the cultural, social and institutional effects of radical pedagogy; and the aesthetics and politics of tolerance. Their research, classroom teaching, and work as a gallery and museum educator is grounded in a sense of art as a force that shapes our environments and experiences and the ways the public tests curators’ and artists’ methodologies. Simpson holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of British Columbia.

They have worked at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Montreal), the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery (Vancouver), and the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto). Independent projects have been presented at VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), EFA Project Space (New York), the Banff Centre (Banff, Alberta), Le Printemps de Septembre (Toulouse), and Dare Dare (Montreal), in addition to many informal venues. Their critical writing has been published in a range of magazines and journals, including C Magazine, Capilano Review, Espace, Sarai Reader, Journal of Canadian Art History, and Amodern, and catalogues published by MIT Press, Presentation House Gallery, and Phi Foundation. In collaboration with the Williams family and musician and writer Alexander Moskos, they coordinate the preservation, research, and presentation of the life work of Trinidadian Canadian artist, poet, and musician Carlyle Williams.

Please note this event is open to Cooper Union staff, faculty, and students.