How does creativity accommodate the changes that come as we age? For artists (painters, sculptors, musicians, poets, dancers), what are the benefits of growing old, when your body and mind begin to occupy alternate spaces? How does one adapt to these changes by adjusting methods and expectations? How does one’s place in the cycle of life affect what one can do and how one does it? How does a creative individual—in a word—persist? Dreishpoon’s talk on Creativity & Aging is another opportunity to visit what has become an expanding interdisciplinary study.

Art historian, curator, and critic Dr. Douglas Dreishpoon will elaborate on some of the central issues—cultural, economic, political, and social—surrounding this timely topic. He will discuss the late work of selected painters, musicians, and dancers, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Tony Bennett, Miles Davis, and Merce Cunningham.

Still Striking | Creativity & Aging
Dr. Doug Dreishpoon
Thursday, September 28
6:00 pm–7:00 pm
Marly Room
$20 MFA Members; $40 Not-yet Members

Dr. Doug Dreishpoon is director of Helen Frankenthaler catalogue raisonné, chief curator emeritus at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and consulting editor at the Brooklyn Rail. His essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Art in America, Art Journal, Art News, Archives of American Art Journal, Sculpture, and The Brooklyn Rail. Recent exhibitions, with publications, include Imperfections by Chance: Paul Feeley Retrospective, 1954-1966, Giving up Your Mark: Helen Frankenthaler in the 1960s and 1970s, and Nothing and Everything: Seven Artists, 1947–1962. Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1988–2009 (Radius Books, 2022) and Modern Sculpture: Artists in Their Own Words, an anthology of sculptors’ writings for the Documents of Twentieth-Century Art series (University of California Press, 2022) are his most current books. Dreishpoon holds a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

This program at the MFA is part of our Picture of Health initiative. Picture of Health is a comprehensive initiative that explores interconnected notions of well-being transcending geographical and temporal boundaries, leveraging the MFA Collection as a starting point. This program fosters a holistic investigation of health, encompassing cognitive, physical, physiological, emotional, civic, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions, all with the aim of nurturing a sense of wellness within our community.