Gregory Volk Lecture
In the past few months, Gregory Volk has written several texts on Ukrainian artists and exhibitions for Hyperallergic, Aperture and ArtsLooker. He spent much of the June 2024 in Kyiv and Lviv, meeting with artists, curators, filmmakers, museum directors and others while Ukraine was attacked daily and nightly by Russia. He frequented artists’ studios and bomb shelters, galleries and cemeteries, museums and memorial services. He familiarized himself with how exemplary Ukrainian artists are finding novel and compelling ways of responding to war, brutal imperialism, and would-be genocide.
At Washington University, he will talk about his engagement with Ukraine—which currently includes curating an online exhibition of Ukrainian artists for the excellent organization Art at a Time Like this— and discuss several Ukrainian artists and artworks that are of exceptional importance for him.
About Gregory Volk
Gregory Volk is a New York-based art writer, freelance curator, and a former associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He writes regularly for Hyperallergic and the Brooklyn Rail, and his articles and reviews have also appeared in many other publications, including Art in America. His book-length essay on German artist Katharina Grosse appears in the monograph Katharina Grosse, published in 2020 by Lund Humphries as part of their Contemporary Painters Series. Among his contributions to exhibition catalogues and books are essays on Joan Jonas (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2007); Vito Acconci, in Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body, 1969-1973 (Charta, 2007); Turkish artist Ayse Erkmen (Venice Biennale, 2011), and Icelandic artist Ragna Róbertsdóttir, in Ragna Róbertsdóttir Works 1984-2017 (Distanz Verlag, Berlin, 2018). Additionally, he has curated numerous exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Gregory Volk received his B.A. from Colgate University and his M.A. from Columbia University.
