Valerie Fletcher, senior curator (of Modern Art) of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, will be the kickoff speaker for the Mid-South Sculpture Alliance’s “Sculpture Conference 2009” in Chattanooga.
Dr. Fletcher’s presentation, “Perspectives on Sculpture,” is Thursday, Sept. 17, from 6-8 p.m. at the Hunter Museum of American Art, located at 10 Bluff View in Chattanooga’s Bluff View Arts district.
Dr. Fletcher’s presentation is open to the general public with admission to the Hunter Museum.
She began her museum career part-time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and part-time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1978 she joined the research staff at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. She became the Curator of Sculpture there in 1984, and upon Judith Zilczer’s retirement in 2003, she became the curator focusing on sculpture and painting up to 1970.
Dr. Fletcher's major exhibitions include “Utopian Visions in Modern Art” (1983), “Alberto Giacometti” (1988-89), “Four Latin American Pioneers of Modernism: Rivera, Torres-Garcia, Lam, and Matta” (1992), “The Human Figure Interpreted” (1995), and “Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor” (2004).
She has also organized smaller scholarly exhibitions on the works of Joseph Albers, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Paul Gauguin, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Shahzia Sikander, and Tim Hawkinson.
Valerie Fletcher earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University in 1978 and 1994. Her Master’s thesis focused on Whistler’s City Scenes (1978), and her dissertation was “Alberto Giacometti: The Paintings (1994).”
The Mid-South Sculpture Alliance’s “Sculpture Conference 2009” is a three-day conference to be held Sept. 17-19, in Chattanooga.
The conference will feature keynote addresses and discussions, seminars and demonstrations, gallery and studio tours featuring sculptors’ studios, art galleries and Chattanooga’s nationally recognized public art.
For an additional fee, attendees can enjoy a special bus trip and lunch in the New Salem Arts Community atop Lookout Mountain.
Of special interest, four Juried Sculpture Exhibitions will open at the conference. Exhibitions are:
Two Professional-Level Members-Only Juried Sculpture Shows - one indoor and one outdoor exhibition - featuring the sculpture of Mid-South Sculpture Alliance and Chicago Sculpture International members only.
Two Student-Level Juried Sculpture Shows - one indoor and one outdoor exhibition - featuring the sculpture of MSA student members and MSA Conference Education Sponsor schools.
The Conference is produced by Mid-South Sculpture Alliance, working to advance the creation, awareness and understanding of sculpture and its important role in our communities. MSA is only the second affiliate member of the International Sculpture Center and serves Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Kentucky.
Its membership is open to anyone anywhere with an interest in and commitment to the field of sculpture.