Symposia & Panel Discussions

The Eloquence of the Visual

This symposium consisted of two sessions in Seoul, one held at the KIAF/Frieze Art Fair on Sept. 3, 2022, and one at the Woong Gallery on Sept. 7, 2022 in conjunction with a group exhibition of the same name. Participating artists included Hazem Taha Hussein, Fré Ilgen, Kim Taek Sang, and Lynn Stern.


Organized by Kate Lim, Director of Art Platform Asia, the presentations focused on an artwork’s unique ability to convey a visceral, perceptual experience rather than a social message or conceptual rhetoric.

The speakers explored issues such as the importance of sensibility and the physiological nature of viewing art; all shared the belief, central to Kate Lim’s founding of Art Platform Asia, that the essence of an artwork is visual.


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A Conversation About Lynn Stern's Work

This discussion was held during Lynn Stern's show, Toward the Invisible, at 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel in New York on November 10, 2019. The participants were artist and Founder/Editor-in-chief of Whitehot Magazine, Noah Becker; art critic, writer, & professor, Donald Kuspit; and Lynn Stern.


Topics covered in the conversation include: what emotions and imagery "belong" to the male gaze vs. the female gaze; ways of responding to art in the age of pop culture, e.g. the quick take vs. the slow reveal; aspects of the relationship between photography and painting; and the effect of abstraction and representation intersecting within an image.




“Perceptual /Conceptual: How Do We Experience Art?”
This symposium was organized and moderated by Lynn Stern, held in her apartment in New York on October 18, 2016. The discussion was modeled on an ongoing series of salon-type evenings called “Checkpoint Ilgen” that painter/sculptor/ writer, Fre Ilgen, and his wife, Jacqueline, began holding in their apartment in Berlin in 2008. The panelists were artist, April Gornik; art critic, writer, writer and teacher, Donald Kuspit; and art critic, historian and writer, Irving Sandler.


Excerpt One


Excerpt Two



Rizzoli Discussion, January 24, 2018
This talk was held at Rizzoli, 1133 Broadway, NYC, in conjunction with the publication of Lynn Stern’s book, SKULL. The discussion focused on Stern’s early influences and how her eight Skull series relate to her other bodies of work. Artist, writer, independent curator, and Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail, Phong Bui, acted as moderator for the conversation with Lynn Stern and art critic, writer, and teacher, Donald Kuspit, who wrote the art historical perspective that accompanied SKULL



Full-length Discussion (approximately 80 minutes)



NeueHouse Panel Discussion, November 29, 2017
This was a panel discussion that took place at NeueHouse, 110 East 25th Street, NYC, in conjunction with the publication of Lynn Stern’s book, SKULL, and a concurrent exhibition at Taka Ishii Gallery in New York. The discussion focused on Stern’s non-literal approach to photography in relation to what is commonly thought of as photographic representation. Panelists included photography critic, historian, curator, and writer, A.D. Coleman; art critic, writer, and teacher, Donald Kuspit; and lecturer, writer, and International Head of Photographs at Christie’s, Darius Himes, and Lynn Stern.


Excerpt (approximately 15 minutes)



Full-length Discussion (approximately 70 minutes)





“Examining Postmodernism: Images/Premises
This two-evening symposium was organized and moderated by Lynn Stern and held at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts on March 5 and 7, 1991. The panelists were photography critic and writer, A.D. Coleman; photography historian and writer, Shelley Rice; art critic and writer Max Kozloff; and art critic, writer and teacher, Donald Kuspit. In addition, each evening a guest panelist from a field other than art was invited – psychoanalyst, writer and teacher, Martin S. Bergmann on March 5th and sociologist, political writer, novelist and cultural commentator, Todd Gitlin on March 7th—thus broadening the discussion to include PostModernism’s effects in the wider culture