Past events

POSTPONED: Jan Sawka: The Place of Memory (The Memory of Place) - A Symposium

Sunday, March 29, 2020, at 2:00pm

The event has been POSTPONED  due to concerns related to coronavirus. We are working to identify a date to reschedule. Stay tuned for more info and stay healthy. 

The event has been POSTPONED  due to concerns related to coronavirus. We are working to identify a date to reschedule. Stay tuned for more info and stay healthy. 

The Kosciuszko Foundation and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, are co-hosting a two-day symposium, paired with an exhibit, spanning both locations that will focus on the artistic legacy of Jan Sawka (1946–2012), a noted contemporary artist of Polish origin and global reach. The panels of scholars will help illuminate the aspects of Jan Sawka's practice, his biography, and the social and historic context of his art. Speakers will include Peter Schwenger, Tom Wolf, Beth Wilson, the exhibition curators: Hanna Maria Sawka, Dr. Frank Boyer, and others.

SYMPOSIUM:

Jan Sawka: The Place of Memory

(The Memory of Place) 

Saturday, March 28, 2:00 PM, The Person and the Place at The Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz 1 Hawk Drive, New Paltz, NY 12561 - MORE 

Sunday, March 29, 2:00 PM, Invoking the Inner Landscape at the Kosciuszko Foundation: 15 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10065

The event at the KF is free and open to the public. Space is limited. Registration required. In lieu of admission, a $10 donation to the Kosciuszko Foundation is appreciated. 

Organized in collaboration with The Polish Cultural Institute, New York 

Jan Sawka (1946–2012) was a noted contemporary artist of Polish origin and global reach. His work is in the collections of over 60 museums worldwide. Sawka lived and worked in the mid-Hudson Valley from 1985 until his death, conceiving of and producing many of his most notable works in his High Falls, NY, studio.

Jan Sawka: The Place of Memory (The Memory of Place) is made up of works that illuminate two aspects of his practice: his fascination with human consciousness, in this case, with memory, and his interest in place and the places through which a human life passes. Sawka's working method and artworks are truly visionary in the sense that he always worked from mental images. Every work he did is open to his thoughts, his emotions, his mental associations, and, above all to memory.

This exhibition features paintings and etchings that illuminate Sawka's visual explorations of the phenomenon of memory, works whose subject matter is the landscape of the mid-Hudson Valley, and works that were created in his studio. Many of these images express a deep empathy and a sense of loss that only exile can bring, leavened by an expansive sense of the beauty that art and nature make available to human beings. The exhibition will include works by the artist from a variety of private collections and from The Dorsky permanent collection.

Featured visual: Jan Sawka, The Memory (or The Mirror), 1987, courtesy the Estate of Jan Sawka; photo credit: Amanda Schweitzer

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