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.

Mr. Gayford will sign books beginning at 6 pm.

Lucy Lippard is a distinguished writer, curator, editor, lecturer, and activist who has long been appreciated for her expansive scholarship and insight, having been one of the first to recognize the dematerialization of the work in art’s movement toward conceptualism as well as an early champion of feminist art. The author of 21 books, curator of 50 exhibitions, cofounder of Printed Matter Inc., the Heresies Collective, Political Art Documentation/Distribution, Artists Call Against U.S.

Gary Rough is a Scottish conceptual artist based in New York who represented his homeland in the 2003 Venice Biennale.

Writer and artist Gregg Bordowitz presents Testing Some Beliefs, an ongoing series of lectures/performances that consider the strength and longevity, as well as the present relevancy, of some personal and collective beliefs.

Andrea Fraser is an artist currently based in Los Angeles, California, where she is a professor at UCLA in the department of art. She also serves as visiting faculty for the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Fraser has used performance, video, and a range of other media to explore the motivations that drive artists, collectors, art dealers, corporate sponsors, museum trustees, and museum visitors from the pursuit of prestige to that of financial investment, to sexual fantasy and self-realization.

Brooklyn-based artist Byron Kim is known for his monochrome paintings, born out of representation, that seemingly challenge their relationship to abstraction. Faye Hirsch describes his work in an interview with the artist for Art in America, “You see subtle variations of color within the fields.

Katy Siegel is a professor of art history at Hunter College in New York, editor in chief of Art Journal, and a contributing editor to Artforum. She has authored numerous essays on modern and contemporary artists, such as Paul Pfeiffer, Takashi Murakami, Lisa Yuskavage, Bernard Frize, and Mark Bradford. She was the curator of High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967–1975, and is currently at work on a large, historical painting exhibition for the Wexner Center in 2013.

Koki Tanaka, born in Tochigi, Japan, is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Known for questioning traditional notions of art through absurd performances--or in the case of his popular object-based acts that employ everyday objects in ways that playfully address the principles of physics and the element of wonder—Tanaka captivates viewers as he challenges expectations.