American-based Cuban-born artist Pavel Acosta has a packed schedule while visiting the University of Wyoming tomorrow through Friday to host several public events, including a gallery walk, panel discussion and workshop.
The first of events will be April’s “Lunchtime Conversations with Curators,” an informal gallery walk-through event with Acosta that will feature the exhibition, “Pavel Acosta: Stolen from the Museum.” This free public event will take place tomorrow from 12:10 to 12:50 p.m. at the UW Art Museum.
The conversation series gives the campus and Laramie community the opportunity to ask curators questions about the museum and the exhibition. Lunch will be provided following each gallery walk-through in the UW Art Museum’s entrance hall.
The exhibition features some of Acosta’s artwork created with unlikely materials, such as paint chips collected from old walls like those found in the country of his youth, to create his reproduction artwork. He has recreated artworks such as “Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh and “Coquelicots (Poppies)” by Claude Monet.
“Acosta’s renditions, although nearly monochromatic white on brown-papered sheetrock, capture the mastery of those previous works, while also displaying his own technical sophistication,” Nicole Crawford, chief curator and assistant director at the UW Art Museum said. “They read as faded memories of history, cherished by an aspiring artist in his youth.”
A special piece that has never been exhibited before will be making its first appearance in this exhibition. Acosta recreated a piece from the UW Art Museum collection by Albert Bierstadt to have a unique artwork from this exhibition, which will be on view until Aug. 10.
“Picasso famously quipped, ‘Good artists borrow, but great artists steal,’” Crawford said. “Acosta replies proudly that with his work, ‘I am the thief.’”
In conjunction with the Shepard Symposium on Social Justice, a panel discussion will take place on Thursday from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in the Wyoming Union Senate Chambers. “The Stolen Paintings: A Conversation on Ethics and Art in the Americas” will feature Acosta and Crawford; Yuneikys Villalonga, chief curator of the Coral Gables Museum; and Nicholas Crane, an assistant professor of geography at UW. The discussion will be about art, ethics, social geographies and political transitions, structured within the physical and metaphorical walls of the museum.
Also on Thursday, the UW Art Museum will host an art-making workshop for ages 13 and older from 6 to 8 p.m. Acosta will guide participants in making their own works of art or recreating known masterpieces using drywall, dried acrylic paint and other construction-based materials.
This workshop was built to encourage maximum creation out of scarce resources. Participants can take home any unused materials. This workshop will cost $10 per person and is limited to 20 participants. To register, go to tinyurl.com/acosta-wkshp.
For more information about the UW Art Museum, call 307-766-6622, visit the website at UWyo.edu/artmuseum or visit the museum’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
