Join artist Petah Coyne in conversation with Amy Gilman, Director of the Chazen Museum of Art, as they discuss creative practice, materials, and artistic process. The discussion will take place in the auditorium and begin with a focus on Petah’s work Untitled #1383 (Sisters – Two Trees) currently on view in the Museum building, through March 2, 2025.
Member Mingle (4-5PM)
Join us for a member-exclusive social under the dreamy, starry night in the Van Gogh Café from 4-5pm before the main event “A Conversation with Petah Coyne and Dr. Amy Gilman” (5-6:30pm). $15 includes beverages at the Member Mingle + admission to the talk. RSVP required.
BUY MEMBER mingle + talk TICKETS
Petah Coyne (b. 1953, Oklahoma City, OK) is a contemporary American artist who works in varied and nontraditional materials including her own specially formulated wax, taxidermy, human hair, scrap metal, silk flowers, and religious statuary. Art history, family memories, and literature often inspire her work, drawing from a large pool of different sources, from Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace to Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Her arrangement of material and juxtaposition of mediums to create large-scale installations, for which she is best known, often evoke themes of life and death, triumph and loss, chaos and stillness, and beauty and darkness.
Amy Gilman, PhD, joined the Chazen Museum of Art in September 2017. In 2024, Gilman’s role was expanded to include the title of senior director for the arts and media. Gilman remains the director of the Chazen and has additional oversight of the Division of the Arts, Wisconsin Public Media, and UW Press. Gilman is committed to positioning museums as locations to promote experimentation, and she often uses her work to pilot changes in current museum models. This manifested in the re:mancipation project, which re-imagined how to engage with and re-interpret a problematic object in the museum’s permanent collection. The project received widespread media attention and acclaim, including articles in the New York Times and Forbes.com. In August 2022 Gilman was appointed by President Biden to serve a five-year term on the National Museum and Library Sciences Board.
Program accessibility information available.
Generous support for this program provided by Art Bridges. Petah Coyne’s sculpture Untitled #1383 (Sisters – Two Trees) generously lent by The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as part of Art Bridges’ Partner Loan Network. Support is provided in part by the Atlantic Foundation, funds from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a division of the NJ Department of State, and a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
