Altoona Virtual Lecture Series: Audience

This virtual lecture series is designed to present the artworks of the contemporary artists while highlighting the importance of the two galleries of permanent collection pieces. These scholarly conversations will explore the medium of photography through its history, contemporary uses, and its possible future.

How do YOU fit in to the exhibition? Hear from artists Huang Guiaer, Wang Runzhong, and Chris McGinnis as they discuss how the audience plays a vital role in the creation and installation of their work. Artist duo Huang Guiaer + Wang Runzhong’s floor pieces are placed throughout the museum, and their contemporary look at Susan Sontag’s classic text, On Photography, requires visitor participation. Hear from Chris McGinnis, an installation artist, curator, and educator, who will share his artistic practice and about his Greenhouse; Facade piece on view in the SAMA Altoona lobby. This event will last one hour and is free to the public.Participants may join using the link provided in the reminder email one day before the event.

Huang Guaier + Wang Runzhong , born in China, are a multimedia artist duo based in Shanghai and New York City. Their work interrogates the ontological meaning of photography, as well as explores the possibilities of contemporary photography across the overlaps of multiple fields. Their projects contextualize from philosophical and political theories, question the increasingly ocular-centric and precarious society, and critique the binary systems in the western academia.

Huang holds Bachelors of Sciences in Psychology and Forensic Science from Syracuse University, and Wang holds Bachelors in Automation Engineering and TV Directing from Communication University of China. They both graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Photography department at Parsons School of Design. Their work has been exhibited in international museums and festivals, including 2018 Three Shadows Photography Award Exhibition in Beijing, “2017 Top 20 Cutting-Edge Photographers in China” at Zhejiang Art Museum, the theme show “Your Selfie Stick” at 2017 Lianzhou Foto Festival, China, “Governing Bodies” at Aronson Gallery, New York, and “Open Books: An Open Dialogue” at Connecticut College, New London. Their writings were selected for this year’s Photographies Conference: Photography in Asia at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Chris McGinnis is an artist, curator and educator working in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with over ten solo exhibitions and over 40 group exhibitions in recent years. Chris has created projects for the

Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and The Rivers of Steel Heritage Corporation. He is co-founder of Alloy Pittsburgh a site-based art project and research laboratory developed for the Carrie Furnaces National Historic Landmark. His work has been published in the National Studio Visit Magazine, European Art Magazine, Manifest’s International Painting Annual as well as numerous local and university publications including Pittsburgh’s Post Gazette and The Tribune Review. Chris has worked for institutions across the country including Carnegie Mellon University, The University of Arizona and Indiana University of Pennsylvania where he served as Director of the University’s Kipp Gallery from 2011 - 2016. He is currently Founding Director and Chief Curator for Rivers of Steel Arts, a division of the Rivers of Steel Heritage Area.