NOW AT THE CORCORAN

NOW at the Corcoran
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro: Are We There Yet?
December 3, 2011–March 11, 2012

For their first exhibition in the United States, Australian artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro explore the aspiration of space travel with the necessity of food consumption. Working with statistics related to food, beverages, and household goods, the artistic duo propose to physically illustrate what an astronaut—consuming only the goods of the “everyman”—would require on a journey to Mars. At the conclusion of the exhibition, the contents of the display will be given away, creating an event to highlight existing cycles of production, consumption, and distribution.

Healy and Cordeiro use everyday objects as their primary materials for making sculptures and installations. Often incorporating locally sourced, prefabricated structures—such as abandoned trailers, domestic furniture, and household goods—Healy and Cordeiro’s art explores ideas related to home, history, permanency, destruction, and revitalization. As co-creators of a single body of work, their collaborations survey a space where individual points of view intersect, presenting familiar objects in unexpected contexts, and challenging patterns of behavior and interpretation. For more information on Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro: Are We There Yet? please visit http://www.corcoran.org/now/healy_cordeiro/index.php.

LECTURES:
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro in conversation with Beatrice Gralton
Thursday, December 1, 2011; 7 p.m.
FREE Members; $10 Public
 The Australian artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro discuss their work, their approach to art making, and the creation of their Corcoran exhibition with Beatrice Gralton, Evelyn S. Nef Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. For more information and to register, please visit https://getinvolved.corcoran.org/healyandcordeiroinconversation.

Artists and NASA
Tuesday, December 6, 2011; 7 p.m.
$15 Members; $20 Public
 Since the dawn of space exploration, many artists—Healy and Cordeiro among them—have been inspired by the quest for the unknown. Many people are unaware that NASA maintains an active and growing collection of space-inspired work, including pieces by Annie Leibovitz, Norman Rockwell, and William Wegman. In this program, Bertram Ulrich, NASA Art Program Curator, and James Dean, NASA Art Program Founding Director, speak about the collection and the connections between art and space. For more information and to register, please visit https://getinvolved.corcoran.org/artistsandnasa.

Patterns in Creativity: Leonardo and Newton
Wednesday, December 7, 2011; 7 p.m.
$15 Members; $20 Public
Are We There Yet? exemplifies the ways that science and art can complement each other. In this lecture, physicist/artist Bulent Atalay compares and contrasts Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton, underscoring the ways these two geniuses forever altered how we view the world. Atalay is the author of Math and the Mona Lisa (Smithsonian Books, 2004), which Jamie Wyeth hailed as “a masterful examination of the differences and similarities in the sciences and the arts,” and Leonardo's Universe (National Geographic Books, 2009). For more information and to register, please visit https://getinvolved.corcoran.org/patternsincreativityleonardoandnewton.

Designs on Film
Thursday, December 8, 2011; 7 p.m.
$12 Members; $15 Public
Take a look behind the scenes of Hollywood’s greatest triumphs with journalist and interior designer Cathy Whitlock. The author of Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction (HarperCollins, 2010) illuminates the often undercelebrated role of production designers—whom she describes as “architects of illusion… visionaries designing cinematic dreams” —in the creation of the most memorable moments in film history from the 1940s through today and then signs copies of her book. For more information and to register, please visit https://getinvolved.corcoran.org/designsonfilm

Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design
500 Seventeenth Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 639-1700
www.corcoran.org

Admission
$10 Adults; $8 full-time students (with ID) and seniors (62+); children under 12 free; Corcoran Members free.