Brian T. Leahy - Ray Johnson’s Ignoble Archive: Morgan-Menil Fellow Lecture

In this lecture, the 2022-2023 Morgan-Menil Research Fellow, Brian T. Leahy, discusses how drawing figured in the work of collagist and correspondence artist Ray Johnson (1927-1995), asking the question: what do these drawings do TO the museum? Leahy considers the oftentimes uncertain status Johnson’s works hold in museum collections, suspended as they are between archival and accessioned objects. For Leahy, Johnson’s works productively trouble disciplinary boundaries.
About the fellowship and speaker:
Established in 2012 in collaboration with the Drawing Institute at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, the biennial Morgan-Menil Research Fellowship is awarded to a scholar in support of an independent project concerning the history, theory, interpretation, or cultural meaning of drawing.
This year’s recipient is Brian T. Leahy. Brian is a PhD candidate in Art History at Northwestern University, where he is completing a dissertation titled “For Immediate Release: Contemporary Art and Exhibition Media in the United States, 1968-1984,” which investigates how printed exhibition media-including press releases, exhibition announcements, and installation images-affected the form and content of contemporary art in the United States between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. Brian holds master’s degrees from Northwestern and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and earned his bachelor’s degree from Davidson College. His research has been supported by a Dedalus Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and a Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship in American Art.
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Public Program of The Menil Collection, Houston, TX. June 22, 2023.