Conference Organizers
Conceived and Developed by: Burns Sowder Arts Advisory Advisor to the Project: Bruce Ferguson Produced By: Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. Venue: Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago
Burns Sowder Arts Advisory
Lynne Sowder and Victoria Burns, Principals of Burns Sowder Arts Advisory, are cultural entrepreneurs committed to the development of new audiences through innovative communications strategies, cultural initiatives, and signature art collecting programs for private and institutional collectors.
Working with their long time collaborator, Nathan Braulick, Burns Sowder Projects have included institutional art programs, like Talkback / Listen for First Bank System, that advance organizational development objectives by engaging the company’s stakeholders in a dialogue about contemporary culture and organizational practices. They have also consulted to foundations like the MacArthur Foundation, designing art collections that support and critically reflect upon the organization’s larger mission of fostering human creativity, the generation of new ideas, the role of the individual in democratic societies, and sustainable practices globally.
Burns Sowder cultural marketing initiatives have included the Art of Pure Pleasure for Häagen-Dazs, which linked the brand to world-class culture and its audiences, and featured commissioned public art projects and short films, unique product sampling environments, and co-branded projects with relevant corporate partners including SONY and Bloomingdales. Women’s Work for Liz Claiborne Inc, was designed as a national campaign to end domestic violence by commissioning new works by internationally recognized artists (Barbara Kruger, Carrie Mae Weems, Crane & Winet and Susan Meiselas among others) for billboards, bus stops, MTV, radios spots and products for sale at retail.
Communications projects develop by Burns Sowder involving new media are aimed at fostering art / artist / audience interactions, and creating dialogue among an organization’s constituencies. These have included multi-media educational projects for Refco, and the LINC Group, among others; and Through Your Eyes, an award winning net project for Walker Art Center that shared the real experiences of Walker audience members as they encountered various programs and people at the art center.
Bruce Ferguson
Bruce W. Ferguson is an independent curator and critic and former Dean, School of Arts at Columbia University. His recent projects include planning for a new institute for media, arts and culture at Arizona State University in Phoenix and consulting on exhibitions to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. He served formerly as the President and Executive Director of the New York Academy of Art; and is the founding Director and first biennial curator of SITE Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Ferguson has curated more than 35 exhibitions for institutions such as the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, the Barbican Art Gallery in London, the Winnipeg and Vancouver Art Galleries in Canada, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. He also organized exhibitions in the international biennales of Sao Paulo, Sydney, Venice, and Istanbul. He is recognized as having identified many of the top contemporary artists in early stages of their careers.
A prolific writer, Ferguson has written for art publications like Canadian Art, Art Forum, Art in America, Art + Text, Flash Art, Bomb Magazine, Art Press, Border Crossings, and Parachute. He was the curator and co-writer for Table at the Imperial, a 60-minute radio play for the CBC Radio Drama Series Playing for Keeps #7 and was awarded a Senior Canada Council Grant in Criticism for writing. Along with Reesa Greenberg and Sandy Nairne, he edited a seminal anthology of essays on the theories of exhibitions, titled Thinking About Exhibitions (Routledge: 1996).
Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc.
As both a property manager and trade show producer, Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. (MMPI) has been North America’s market maker for the industries it serves, bringing together wholesalers, retailers and consumers for more than 75 years.
Each year, MMPI hosts 70 major trade shows and consumer events and more than 300 conferences, seminars and special events throughout North America. These events bring showroom tenants and show exhibitors the customers they seek. Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, MMPI supplies its tenants, their employees and visitors with a unique combination of business services and amenities to meet all needs efficiently on-site.
Vornado Realty Trust, owner of Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. and based in New York City, is a fully integrated equity real estate investment trust with four major platforms — New York City office, Washington, D.C. office, Retail Properties and Merchandise Marts. With a portfolio of approximately 60 million square feet, with an enterprise value of $25.6 billion and a market capitalization of $15.11 billion, Vornado is one of the largest owners and managers of real estate within the U.S. Vornado’s common shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and are traded under the symbol VNO.
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Crowning Chicago’s downtown lakefront, Millennium Park is an unprecedented combination of architecture, monumental sculpture and landscape design featuring an outdoor music pavilion designed by Frank Gehry; a monumental, site-specific sculpture by London-based artist Anish Kapoor; an interactive sculptural fountain by Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa; and a contemporary garden by Seattle-based landscape designer Kathryn Gustafson of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd.
Frank Gehry, winner of the National Medal of Art, applied his signature style to this revolutionary outdoor concert venue. The Pavilion stands 120-feet high, with a billowing headdress of brushed stainless steel ribbons that frame the stage opening and connect to an overhead trellis of crisscrossing steel pipes. The trellis supports the sound system, which spans the 4,000 fixed seats and the Great Lawn, which accommodates an additional 7,000 people.
This state-of-the-art sound system, the first of its kind in the country, was designed to mimic the acoustics of an indoor concert hall by distributing enhanced sound equally over both the fixed seats and the lawn.
The Jay Pritzker Pavilion is home to the Grant Park Music Festival and other free concerts and events. It was named in memory of Chicago business leader Jay Pritzker, who with his wife Cindy, established the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979.
Symposium C6 runs concurrent with 