Expert Series: “Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History”

Hear from Robert Longo and a panel of art historians for a conversation about history painting moderated by Margaret Andera, senior curator of contemporary art and curator of the exhibition Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History.

This drop-in experience is included with Museum admission and is free for Members. Admission tickets are available at the door or online.

Meet the experts

Robert Longo is an internationally acclaimed artist who has long explored our media-driven culture. Rising to prominence in the 1980s as a leading figure of the Pictures Generation, Longo first gained recognition for his Men in the Cities drawings, which quickly became some of the most recognizable artworks of the decade. Today, he is widely known for his ambitiously scaled, hyperrealistic charcoal drawings that reflect on the construction of symbols of power and authority. Robert Longo is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Broad Museum, Los Angeles; the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; and the Tate Museum, London. He lives and works in New York and is represented by Pace Gallery and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

Cassandra Albinson (she/her) oversees the collection of European paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts from the medieval period through Postimpressionism at the Harvard Art Museums. Albinson specializes in British and French painting of the 18th and 19th centuries, with a particular focus on portraiture. Exhibitions Cassandra has organized include Mutiny: Works by Géricault (Harvard Art Museums, 2018), The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015), Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power & Brilliance (National Portrait Gallery, London, and Yale Center for British Art, 2010–11).

James Nisbet is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Art History and PhD Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and Director of the Environmental Humanities Research Center. He has published widely on the history and theory of ecocritical visual art and aesthetics from late modernism to the present. Nisbet’s research has been supported by institutions including Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities, Georgia O’Keeffe Research Center, Dumbarton Oaks, and Getty Research Institute. His book projects include Ecologies, Environments, and Energy Systems in Art of the 1960s and 1970s (MIT Press, 2014), Second Site (Princeton University Press, 2021), and, as editor with Lyle Massey, The Invention of the American Desert: Art, Land, and the Politics of Environment (University of California Press, 2021).

The Expert Series welcomes renowned artists, scholars, and cultural activators to the Museum for expansive dialogues that dive deeper into an exhibition, artist, or theme.

The Milwaukee Art Museum is grateful to our exhibition sponsors.

Image: Robert Longo (American, b. 1953), Untitled (Refugees At Mediterranean Sea, Sub-Saharan Migrants, July 25, 2017) (detail), 2018. Charcoal on mounted paper. 97 × 120 in. (246.38 × 304.8 cm). Private collection