Matrix: On the Art of Tom Burr, Torkwase Dyson, and Tony Smith
A public program with artists Tom Burr and Torkwase Dyson discussing the work of Tony Smith within the context of its impact—and more broadly, modernist ideologies—on their individual practices.
Organized by James Voorhies and Patricia Hickson
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
600 Main Street
Hartford, CT
April 14, 2022
Made possible with funding and support from Tony Smith Foundation and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; realized within my responsibilities while Executive Director of the Tony Smith Foundation
The Wadsworth Atheneum played a pivotal role in Smith’s life. The group exhibition Black, White and Grey, which included work by Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Frank Stella, and Anne Truitt, among others, opened on January 9, 1964. It was curated by Samuel Wagstaff, who was the museum’s Curator of Paintings and Sculpture from 1961 to 1968. It featured one work by Smith—a pair of wall-like constructions, each eight feet square by two feet deep—titled The Elevens Are Up (1963).
Black, White and Grey was the first museum exhibition in the United States to present work by artists who would later be associated with Minimalism, Tony Smith among them. At age 51, Black, White and Grey was the artist’s first exhibition.
Wagstaff and the Wadsworth Atheneum then became instrumental in the advancement of Smith’s artistic career. In late 1966, Wagstaff organized the first solo exhibition by the artist with concurrent presentations in different cities—the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia—titled Tony Smith: Two Exhibitions of Sculpture. Following its close, the Wadsworth acquired Amaryllis (1965), one of the works included in the exhibition and the very first work by Smith to ever enter a museum collection. By fall of 1967, Smith was pictured with his sculpture Smoke (1967) on the cover of TIME magazine as part of an article about the zeitgeist of large-scale sculpture being presented at the time in both museums and in public space.
Against this rich historical context, and with matrix served as an underlying concept for considering the field of contemporary art today, this program engaged artists Tom Burr and Torkwase Dyson in discussion about what it means to make art and exhibitions, reflecting upon not only the interconnective nature among different bodies of work but also the sustaining power of networks themselves, which bring speculative, theoretical, or otherwise unrealized projects into the public realm.
Matrix: On the Art of Tom Burr, Torkwase Dyson, and Tony Smith inaugurated a new series of nomadic programs called “In Dialogue,” that I conceived to help situate and discuss the relevancy of work by Smith within contemporary art and design contexts. Matrix was co-organized with Patricia Hickson, Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
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