Autumn (...Nothing Personal) is a public sculpture by the artist Teresita Fernández on view August 27 through October 1, 2018. Commissioned by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts, the installation is both a physical site and a space for public dialogue and performance.
Autumn (...Nothing Personal) references James Baldwin’s 1964 text “Nothing Personal,” published as a collaborative book with the photographer Richard Avedon at the height of the civil rights movement. Join us to read James Baldwin’s essay. Harvard Art Museums is looking for volunteers to read the essay in public throughout the month of September, 2018. Sign up online to join a group reading or use the installation to read any time. Host your own reading, discussion group, meeting, or public action.
Visit Autumn (...Nothing Personal) throughout the month for ongoing events or host your own reading, discussion, or performance any time.
Every day, Autumn (...Nothing Personal) will host events with faculty, students, staff, and members of the Harvard and surrounding communities, including: the Aquinnah Wampanoag people; the Association of Black Harvard Women; the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights; the Harvard Human Rights Review; Jill Johnson and the Harvard Dance Center; William (Ned) Friedman, Director of the Arnold Arboretum; Expressions Dance Company; the Task Force on Asian and Pacific American Studies; Diana Oh and the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.); Queer Kitchen; the Du Bois Orchestra at Harvard; Claire Chase; and many others.
Teresita Fernández is a contemporary American artist best known for her prominent public installations and experiential large-scale sculptures that evoke striking landscapes. Often inspired by natural wonders, Fernández frequently places importance in her choice of medium, employing gold, graphite, and other minerals that have complicated histories often tied to colonialism.
Appointed by President Barack Obama, Fernández was the first Latina to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a 100-year-old federal panel that advises the president and Congress on national matters of design and aesthetics. She is a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Artist's Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Fernández’s works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. Fernández received a BFA from Florida International University, Miami, in 1990 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, in 1992. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Currently on view at the Harvard Art Museums is Fernández’s ink and pencil drawing Small American Fires (2016), a recent addition to the museums’ modern and contemporary galleries. The twelve-part drawing evokes the landscape of a natural wildfire while alluding to ideas of protest, politics, and change.
This project was made possible with the support of the Johnson/Kulukundis Family President’s Fund for Arts at Harvard University.
Follow Autumn (...Nothing Persona) on Instagram for events and other updates: @autumnnothingpersonal
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