Artist Jenny Saville and Chief Curator Andrea Karnes in Conversation

The Exhibition Lecture Series is a dynamic new program featuring curators and artists from the Modern’s special exhibitions and permanent collection. This series provides a rare opportunity to explore the creative processes, curatorial strategies, and artistic visions that shape modern and contemporary art. The Exhibition Lecture Series is a free program open to the public. Seating begins at 5:30 pm. Free admission tickets (limit two per person) are available at the Modern’s information desk beginning at 4 pm on the day of the lecture. A limited number of tickets (limit two per person) will be available for purchase online ($5) from 10 am until 4 pm the day before the lecture. 

Join the Modern’s Chief Curator, Andrea Karnes, for a conversation with Jenny Saville, one of the world’s foremost figure painters, in conjunction with the exhibition Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting. Organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, this landmark exhibition—the first major US museum presentation of Saville’s work—traces her career from the early 1990s to today. Karnes and Saville will discuss the artist’s reinvigoration of figurative painting, her energetic, bodily approach to the medium, and the ways her work challenges conventional and historical notions of beauty.Jenny Saville was born in 1970 in Cambridge, England. She received her B.A. Honors Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art, Scotland before being represented by Gagosian in 1997. 

Saville is known for her depictions of the human form, which transcend the boundaries of both classical figuration and modern abstraction. Saville has been credited with originating a new and challenging method of depicting the figure in her work by imbuing her monumental paintings with a sculptural yet elusive dimensionality that verges on the abstract. 

Saville’s works are featured in several public collections, including the Tate, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and The Long Museum, Shanghai. In 2007, Saville was elected a Royal Academician, Royal Academy of Arts, London.