In one of her best-known works, sculptor Tara Donovan (M.F.A. ’99) stacked more than three million 7-ounce plastic cups in rows of varying heights across a 50-by-60-foot space. The result resembles a serene, iridescent ice field.
Join us Tuesday, Nov. 10, as Donovan returns to campus for the VCUarts Lecture Series to discuss her work, including her current exhibition, Monochrome: Calder and Tara Donovan, on view at the Seattle Art Museum through Jan. 17, 2027. After her talk, she will join Kendall Buster, professor of fine arts in the Sculpture and Extended Media Program, for a conversation followed by an audience Q&A.
Tuesday, Nov. 10
Happy hour, 4:30 p.m.
Lecture: 5:30 p.m. (doors open at 5:15 p.m.)
Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Markel Center
Free, but registration required. In-person and virtual options available.
Widely regarded as one of the most significant voices in contemporary American sculpture and installation art, Donovan has earned critical acclaim for her commitment to process and her ability to exploit an object’s inherent physical characteristics, producing works that generate unique perceptual phenomena and atmospheric effects.
For nearly 30 years, she has turned drinking straws, Scotch tape, Styrofoam cups, paper clips and other everyday objects into some of the most arresting installations, sculptures and drawings in contemporary art. Donovan draws out the overlooked properties of these mass-produced materials, exploring the transformative effects of accumulation and aggregation. Her ethereal works challenge our perceptual habits and preconceptions.
Donovan’s work attracted immediate attention. Soon after graduating from VCU School of the Arts, she landed her first major museum solo exhibition, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Hemicycle Gallery in Washington, D.C. A year later, she was included in the Whitney Biennial in New York. In 2005, she received the first Calder Prize. In 2008, at 38, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, an honor often called the “genius grant.”
Museums in the U.S. and abroad have mounted solo exhibitions of her work, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Saint Louis Art Museum; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.
Her work is held in the collections of the Met and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
