Cynthia Hawkins, Chapter 3: Maps Necessary for a Walk in 4D #2, 2024, acrylic and oil bar on canvas, 76 x 66 in. (193 x 167.6 cm) © Cynthia Hawkins. Courtesy of the artist, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and STARS, Los Angeles. Photo: Steven Probert
Thursday April 24
6 pm
534 West 21st Street
Please join us for a conversation between artist Cynthia Hawkins and Donna De Salvo, Senior Adjunct Curator, Special Projects at Dia Art Foundation, to celebrate Hawkins’s first exhibition with the gallery and her recently published book Art Notes, Art. The event will take place at our 534 West 21st Street location on April 24 at 6 pm, it is free and open to all.
Published by Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), Art Notes, Art traces Hawkins’s thoughts about art, process-oriented practice, and investigations of abstraction. Described by Hawkins as “an act of recovery, a project to bring into the world that which has been lost,” the book documents the years between 1979 and 1981—an especially innovative period during which she recorded her ideas and reflections in a journal.
Hawkins and De Salvo first met in 1981 at the Dia Art Foundation, where Hawkins worked between 1981-85 and De Salvo was a curator
Copies of the book will be available for purchase in person and online.
For more information or questions, please reach out to press@paulacoopergallery.com.
Cynthia Hawkins (b. 1950, Queens, New York) received a BA in painting from the Queens College, City University of New York in 1977 and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1992. In the 1970s and 1980s Hawkins was an important member of the communities surrounding the Black-owned New York galleries Just Above Midtown, Cinque Gallery and Kenkeleba Gallery, where she had multiple one-person exhibitions. In 2022, she was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces. Hawkins has received numerous awards, most recently the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting in 2023.
Donna De Salvo is the senior adjunct curator, special projects at Dia Art Foundation. Known for her close collaborations with artists and context-driven approaches to exhibitions, she’s worked extensively with Steve McQueen, Walter De Maria, Roni Horn, among others. De Salvo is a noted scholar on Andy Warhol and has lectured, written, and curated extensively on the artist’s work. She has held curatorial and senior leadership positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Tate Modern. De Salvo returned to Dia in 2020 where she worked as a curator from 1981-1986.