Clyfford Still and Community: A Talk and Conversation

Doors open at 6 p.m.
Galleries open 6-6:30 p.m.
Talk in the lobby 6:30-7:30 p.m.

The current exhibition, Dialogue and Defiance: Clyfford Still and the Abstract Expressionists, considers the nuanced ways in which Clyfford Still was part of an artists’ community in the late 1940s and early 1950s, despite his protestations to the contrary.

Hear scholar Allan Antliff present Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, and a new Romanticism as part of this exploration of this artist community. This will be followed by a conversation inspired by The Club gatherings of this time period with exhibition curator Valerie Hellstein and Bailey H. Placzek, CSM's curator of collections and catalogue raisonné research and project manager.

This program is $5 for the public and free for CSM members. Registration is required, and space is limited.

About the Speakers

Allan Antliff, Jeffrey Rubinoff Legacy Professor in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Victoria, is the author of Joseph Beuys (2014), Anarchy and Art (2007), and Anarchist Modernism (2001). Active as an art critic, Allan has published numerous art reviews and feature articles in journals such as SubStance, Canadian Art, C Magazine, and BlackFlash.  He has also contributed to exhibition catalogs for the Musee Du Luxemburg, Whitney Museum of Art, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and other institutions. Building on research while in residence at the Clyfford Still Museum (“Clyfford Still on the Margins of Anarchy,” Modernism/Modernity, 2020), Allan is currently exploring Still’s impact in the broader abstract expressionist movement.

Recent publications include “Art/Economics” in Art and Knowledge after 1900: Interactions between Modern Art and Thought (University of Manchester Press, 2023) and Julian Beck’s Scroll Painting for the Living Theatre’s The Yellow Methuselah: Vasily Kandinsky, Anarchism, and the Politics of Abstract Expressionism, co-authored with Giorgia Autelitano (Morra Foundation, 2024).

Valerie Hellstein is a scholar of Abstract Expressionism, and is writing a book on Abstract Expressionism and “The Club,” a New York City loft where artists, intellectuals, critics, poets, and musicians gathered to present ideas, debate, listen, and share their work. Hellstein has written essays and articles and given talks on various aspects of Abstract Expressionism for over fifteen years. She has a PhD in art history from Stony Brook University, and for a decade she taught modern and contemporary art to college students and adult learners. She also worked for a time as a researcher at the Willem de Kooning Foundation in New York. Before becoming the managing editor at the Denver Art Museum, she taught courses at the University of Denver and CSU and led weekly tours at the Clyfford Still Museum.

Bailey Placzek is the Clyfford Still Museum’s curator of collections and catalogue raisonné research and project manager. She has been engaged in CSM’s curatorial program and collections research since before the Museum's opening in 2011. She has given numerous talks at CSM—including The Secret Lives of Clyfford Still’s Paintings (2022)—as well as at various local and national conferences like the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the National Art Education Association (NAEA). Other curatorial projects include Clyfford Still, Art, and the Young Mind (2022), A Decade of Discovery: Clyfford Still in Denver (2021–22), and Still: Elemental (2019). Placzek’s work is focused on advancing access to collections, promoting art’s ability to foster connections among humanity across time, and deconstructing museum work to make it more transparent, collaborative, and fun. Placzek received dual BA degrees in Art History and Art from the University of Kansas and a MA in Art History from the University of Denver.