An Evening with Artist James Welling and Contemporary Art Curator and Artist Alex Klein

Enjoy a rare opportunity to see an intimate discussion between contemporary artist James Welling and curator Alex Klein exploring Welling's photographic and creative process during an "In Dialogue" program at the Brandywine River Museum of Art on Thursday, October 29 at 6 p.m. The museum's current exhibition, Things Beyond Resemblance: James Welling Photographs* features images taken by Welling of places where artist Andrew Wyeth lived and worked in Chadds Ford and in Maine. 

"In Dialogue" is limited to an audience of 30 and will take place in the gallery, among Welling's works.

James Welling has been questioning the norms of representation since the 1970s. His work centers on an exploration of photography, shuffling the elemental components of the medium to produce a distinctly uncompromising body of work. Welling is also intensely interested in cultural and personal ideas of memory in his work. In opening up the medium of photography for experimentation, James Welling's practice has influenced an entire generation of artists and photographers. Welling's work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally.  

Alex Klein, a former student of Welling's, is The Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber Program Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Her exhibitions have included Barbara Kasten: Stages (2015), the first major survey of the artist's work; and Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson: Consider the Belveder (2015).

The 50 photographs in the exhibition explore the influence of one artist upon another across time and media. Welling began the Wyeth series as an examination of Andrew Wyeth's formative influence on Welling's career, from his earliest watercolors in the 1960s through his recent photographs. "I realized I had never stopped thinking about Wyeth," said Welling, "he had become a part of how I see."

Admission costs $20 (member, $15). Things Beyond Resemblance: James Welling Photographs is on view through November 15.

The Brandywine River Museum of Art features an outstanding collection of American art housed in a 19th-century mill building with a dramatic steel and glass addition overlooking the banks of the Brandywine. The museum is located on Route 1 in Chadds Ford, PA. For more information, call 610.388.2700 or visit brandywine.org.

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The exhibition is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The planning of this exhibition has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.