Beginning in the 1970s, artists, galleries, and art schools began proclaiming, “Painting is dead.” Although painting had dominated the visual arts since antiquity, suddenly conceptual art, process art, earthworks, photography, video, and digital art were all the rage. Painting, it seemed, was quickly being supplanted not only by other modes, but new definitions of art that placed greater importance on the artists’ ideas and processes than finished art objects. Or was it?

Did painters languish in the shadows of conceptual and new-media artists? Were they hopelessly irrelevant to modern audiences and risking obsolescence with every stroke of the brush? In conjunction with SVMA’s current painting and mixed-media exhibition, Contemplative Elements, it is time to take another look and determine if painting ever was, and/or is passé. Art historian Ann Wiklund and curator Kate Eilertsen lead the discussion on this curious and timely topic.

$15 general admission, $10 SVMA Members. Seating is limited.