This lecture explores the history of both interwar collage and surrealism and how these art historical movements have continued to shape contemporary art, including the figurative and abstract works in the group exhibition Synchronicities: Intersecting Figuration with Abstraction.

Admission is free; ticket reservations are encouraged. Visit the event website for a registration link.

Lisa Sutcliffe is Curator in the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where her principal focus is post-1960s photography and time-based media. Sutcliffe joined the Met in 2022, from the Milwaukee Art Museum, where she served as Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Art. While there she oversaw the development of the museum’s Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts, a 10,000-square-foot space dedicated to time-based media. Previously, she was an Assistant Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and held a curatorial fellowship at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Sutcliffe has organized many exhibitions, including a monumental commission with Derrick Adams entitled “Our Time Together” (2021); “James Benning and Sharon Lockhart: Over Time” (2019/2022); “Susan Meiselas: Through a Woman’s Lens” (2020); “Sara Cwynar: Image Model Muse” (2019); “Naoya Hatakeyama: Natural Stories” (2012); “The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography” (2009); and “The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison” (2018), for which she organized a city-wide collaborative initiative on the role of the arts in criminal-justice reform. Sutcliffe has also acquired and shown film and video work by Charles Atlas, Rineke Dijkstra, Leslie Hewitt, Kahlil Joseph, Anthony McCall, and Ryan Trecartin. She has organized film screenings, lectures, and panels with internationally acclaimed artists and written about contemporary art and photography, including essays on Naoya Hatakeyama, Nigel Poor, and An-My Lê. Sutcliffe holds an MA in the history of art from Boston University and a BA in art history from Wellesley College.