The MAK Center for Art and Architecture invites you to join us for a public discussion with Neville Wakefield and Hilton Als in conjunction with the exhibition Helmut Lang: What remains behind at the Schindler House. This program brings together two influential voices in art and culture to discuss Helmut Lang’s artwork and practice in the context of his first solo institutional exhibition in Los Angeles. Hilton Als and Neville Wakefield, curator of the exhibition, will discuss the impact of Helmut Lang’s artwork through its process and presence.
3:00 — 5:00 PM
Reception to follow
Please visit here to purchase tickets.
**This event is at capacity.
HILTON ALS
Hilton Als is an award-winning journalist, critic and curator. He has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1994. Prior to the New Yorker, Als was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (2017), Yale’s Windham-Campbell Literature Prize (2016), the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism (2002-03), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000). His first book, The Women, was published in 1996. His next book, White Girls, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Lambda Literary Award in 2014. My Pinup, an essay on Prince and desire, was published in November 2022. In 2024 he edited God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin for the centenary of Baldwin’s birth.
In 2017, he curated the critically lauded exhibition Alice Neel, Uptown, which traveled from David Zwirner, New York, to Victoria Miro, London and Venice. In 2019, Als presented God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin at David Zwirner, New York, followed by Frank Moore at, David Zwirner, New York (2021) and Toni Morrison’s Black Book, at David Zwirner, New York (2022). He curated a series of three successive exhibitions for the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, of the work of Celia Paul (2018), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2019), and Njideka Akunyili Crosby (2022). In 2022, he curated Joan Didion: What She Means at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, which traveled to the Perez Art Museum in Miami. In 2024 he curated Jared Buckhiester: No heaven, no how at David Kordansky, Los Angeles and At Home: Alice Neel in the Queer World at David Zwirner, Los Angeles which traveled to Victoria Miro, London. He is currently a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and has also taught at Columbia University's School of the Arts, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and the Yale School of Drama.
NEVILLE WAKEFIELD
Neville Wakefield is a postmodern writer and curator interested in exploring the ways in which art behaves outside of institutional contexts. As senior curatorial advisor for PS1 MoMA and curator of Frieze Projects, he gained a reputation for challenging the conditions that shape art in both commercial and noncommercial contexts. Explorations of time and space have been a signature part of his practice. He has worked extensively with international institutions, including the Schaulager in Switzerland, where he curated the Matthew Barney retrospective Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail, one of the first shows to juxtapose the work of a contemporary artist with that of half a millennium before. Space as it relates to landscape and land art led him to co-found Elevation1049, a site-specific biennial in Gstaad, Switzerland, while also shaping the recurring Desert X exhibitions in the Coachella Valley region of Southern California of which he is Founding Artistic Director. He has also been instrumental in the development and success of Desert X AlUla, taking place in AlUla northwest Saudi Arabia, home to the country’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hegra along with numerous other initiatives aimed at promoting art in the Gulf region.
Related Exhibition
Helmut Lang: What remains behind
February 19, 2025 — May 4, 2025
Related Event
Opening Reception for Helmut Lang: What remains behind
February 19, 2025
6:00 PM—8:00 PM
Curatorial Walkthrough with Neville Wakefield
February 23, 2025
12:00 PM—1:00 PM
The exhibition is presented with the support of Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.
