The Diana Cooper Memorial Lecture Series
First inaugural lecture honouring:
The Role of Librarians in Intellectual Inquiry
This talk will examine the work and archives of two contemporary artists:
Felipe Ehrenberg and Lynn Hershman. Both artists consider their archives, and the associated documents and multimedia objects therein, to be works of art. Ehrenberg, a self-identified neologist, sees his archive as a work of Conceptual art and as a performance piece. Hershman envisions her archive to be a collage of time and as a site rife with interactive possibilities that came to fruition with her creation of an online work in the virtual world called Second Life. Drawing from her experience with the archives, interviews with the artists, and her knowledge of archival practices, Kam explores the multifaceted relationships between the artists and their archives.
D. Vanessa Kam earned Master’s Degrees in Art History and in Library and Information Science from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a Kress Fellow in Art Librarianship at Yale University Arts Library in 2000, and worked as Associate Art Librarian and Exhibits Manager at the Stanford University Libraries from 2000-2005. She is currently Head of Fine Arts, UBC Library.
