Philip Van Keuren, professor of art and director of the Pollock Gallery for the Division of Art at SMU

An internationally recognized photographer, Nicholas Nixon has helped shape the dialogue of photographic discourse for over four decades. His work gained broad attention when it was included in one of the most influential exhibitions of the 1970s, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape at the George Eastman House in 1975. His first solo museum exhibition in 1976 was curated by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Michael Petry presents “Nature Morte: Contemporary artists reinvigorate the Still-Life tradition” in conjunction with the publication of his new book by the same title. Dr. Michael Petry was born in Texas, but has lived in London since 1981. With a PhD in Arts from Middlesex University, Petry has diligently investigated art from various angles as an artist, author, co-founder of the Museum of Installation in London, and Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), London.

Matthew Collings, the British artist and writer, has been recognized throughout a diverse and emphatic career for his wit and brilliant perspective on art and the culture that surrounds it.

Matthew Buckingham is a filmmaker and multimedia artist recognized for utilizing photography, film, video, audio, writing, and drawing to question the role that social memory plays in contemporary life. After earning an MFA from Bard College and attending the Whitney’s Independent Study Program, Buckingham received the 2003 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellowship and a 2007 Artpace residency. His projects create physical and social contexts that encourage viewers to question what is most familiar to them.

Martin Gayford, the British critic, writer, and curator, is "the man in a blue scarf." As a prominent sitter for Freud and the subject of the painting Man in a Blue Scarf, 2004, Gayford wrote of his experience in the 2010 book Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud. For Tuesday Evenings at the Modern, Gayford shares what he observed throughout his extended sittings and the relationship that he inevitably developed with the artist. 

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, practices architecture in Fayetteville, Arkansas and serves as Distinguished Professor and Department Chair in the School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. Recognized throughout his career with honors and awards, Blackwell received a 2012 AIA National Honor Award and the 2012 Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for a unique use of design strategies that draw upon vernaculars and contradictions of place to transgress conventional boundaries for architecture.

Tuesday Evenings at the Modern opens this season with insights into the art and issues of Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s. Dr. Mark Thistlethwaite, Kay and Velma Kimbell Chair of Art History at TCU, directs a panel discussion with the Modern’s Chief Curator Michael Auping, organizer of the exhibition Urban Theater, along with Curator Andrea Karnes and Assistant Curator Alison Hearst, who also contributed essays to the catalogue.

Kenny Scharf, an artist featured in Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s, rose to prominence in the 1980s East Village art scene and was one of the first artists to inject elements of street culture into the mainstream of contemporary art.