Department of Art Lecture
Series hosts Helena Reckitt

Helena Reckitt, an internationally recognized curator of contemporary art, will present a public lecture at 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 19, in the Fine Arts Recital Hall at Arkansas State University. Reckitt’s lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Art's Visiting Artist/Scholar Lecture Series and the Arkansas State University Art Student Union. Reckitt is also serving as juror for this year’s Student Art Exhibition. While on campus, she will select artwork submitted by students to be presented in the Fine Arts Center Gallery later this spring.

Helena Reckitt was born in London and studied English literature at Oxford University. In 2006, she joined the highly regarded Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto as senior curator of programs. Prior to her position as senior curator at the Power Plant gallery, Reckitt was senior director of exhibitions and education at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. In the 1990s, she was head of talks at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, where she organized a program of broad-ranging cultural debate.

Reckitt is the editor of “Art and Feminism” (Phaidon Press, 2001), an anthology widely regarded as the basic reference book for feminist art. “Art and Feminism” surveys three decades of history via an essay by noted scholar and theorist Peggy Phelan, but the work also reproduces works by 155 artists, and supplies excerpts from groundbreaking texts by artists and theorists. Cited in Amazon.com’s Best of  2001, “Art and Feminism” is now available in paperback, has been translated into French, and will appear soon in Italian, Korean, and Japanese editions.

Reckitt began her career in publishing, establishing the first-ever performance studies program while an associate editor at Routledge in the late 1980s. Exhibitions Reckitt curated while at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center included 2005’s “What Business Are You In?” on corporate and academic culture and “Found Wanting,” on the aesthetics of the in-between. She was the co-editor, with Josh Oppenheimer, of “Acting on AIDS: Sex, Drugs and Politics” (Serpent’s Tail, London, 1998). Reckitt’s articles and reviews have appeared in “Art Papers,” “Art Asia Pacific,” “C” magazine, “The Guardian,” and “n.paradoxa.” She has taught contemporary art history at Emory University and the Atlanta College of Art.

The event is free and open to the public. Additional information may be obtained by contacting the Department of Art at 972-3050.

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