PHOENIX (March 18, 2024) – This spring, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) hosts the 2024 Eric Fischl Series in partnership with Phoenix College (PC) and contemporary painter, sculptor, author, and PC alumnus Eric Fischl. The event includes a student art exhibition and reception in Cummings Great Hall, followed by the Vanguard Awards presentation and a conversation between Eric Fischl and guest artist Matthew Ritchie in Whiteman Hall. Coinciding with the program at PhxArt, the Museum has acquired Ritchie’s luminous installation Something Like Day (2004), which is on view now in Cummings Great Hall. The 2024 Eric Fischl series will be hosted on Wednesday, April 10, 2024 from 7 – 8:30 pm. Tickets are $5 for the public and free for Museum Members and are available here. Tickets are free for Maricopa County Community College students with an active ID.

“We are excited to welcome Matthew Ritchie to Phoenix Art Museum as this year’s Eric Fischl Lecture speaker,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Museum’s Sybil Harrington Director and CEO. “Our continued partnership with Phoenix College and Eric Fischl in presenting this annual lecture series is a testament to our community’s commitment to supporting emerging artists and connecting them with some of the most dynamic artists of our time. This year is exceptional as students and visitors hear directly from Ritchie and experience one of his early large-scale architectural works, a 40-foot illuminated wall, which we are proud to now feature in the collection.”

Each year, the Eric Fischl series hosted by Phoenix College and held at Phoenix Art Museum draws students, artists, and community members for engaging conversations about art. The 2024 Eric Fischl guest artist is New-York based Matthew Ritchie, an accomplished contemporary artist who seeks to describe the intangible links between information and collective thought. Since the early 1990s, Ritchie (b. 1964, London) has developed an installation and painting practice drawing from the vocabularies of science, sociology, anthropology, mythology and the history of art, with the goal of representing the entire universe. In his paintings, installations, wall drawings, light boxes, sculptures, projections, artists books, and performances, he describes systems, ideas, structures of knowledge and belief, and their subsequent interpretations in a kind of cerebral web that makes tangible and recognizable ephemeral and abstract theories of information and time. Ritchie has collaborated with scientists, computer programmers, and architects to realize his large-scale installation works like Something Like Day (2004), a new acquisition to the Phoenix Art Museum Collection that is currently on view in Cummings Great Hall. The lightbox display boasts a holograph-like effect; as the visitor walks alongside and in front of it, naked figures metamorphize into skeletons and vice versa depending on which way you approach the work. Ritchie earned a BFA from Camberwell College of Arts in 1986 and attended Boston University.

The event on April 10 will begin with an exhibition of artwork by Phoenix College students on view in the Museum’s Cummings Great Hall. As part of the 2024 Eric Fischl Series, Fischl and Ritchie will also present the prestigious Vanguard Awards to students whose works are selected as “Best in Show” from pieces submitted to the annual exhibition. Fischl created the Vanguard Award in 2005 to recognize emerging student talent in the fine arts, establish Phoenix College as a center for the arts in downtown Phoenix, and create life-changing opportunities for students. Recipients of the award receive $2,500. To date, more than 62 students have been presented with the Vanguard Award.

The evening will close with an engaging conversation between Fischl and Ritchie in Whiteman Hall, during which visitors will learn about Ritchie’s artistic practice and how his works tie together in a narrative structure.

Through the Maricopa County Community Colleges District (MCCCD) program at Phoenix Art Museum, tickets to the Eric Fischl Lecture are free for all MCCCD students who attend any of the 10 colleges or affiliated skill centers. An active student ID is required at check-in and time of purchase. Through the MCCCD program, MCCCD students also enjoy free access to PhxArt, including special-engagement exhibitions, made possible through the generosity of Men’s Arts Council.

For more information, high-resolution photography, or a copy of this news release in Spanish, contact the Communications Office at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About Matthew Ritchie
Matthew Ritchie has exhibited internationally over the past two decades, including solo presentations at the CVAD Galleries at the University of North Texas (2021); Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, Houston, TX (2018); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2014); ZKM Karlsruhe (2012), Barbican Theatre, London, UK (2012); Brooklyn Academy of Music (2009), NY, St. Louis Art Museum, MO (2007); MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2004), Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX (2003); and Dallas Museum of Art, TX (2001). Matthew Ritchie: A Garden in the Flood, a major mid-career retrospective at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, was on view from November 2022 through March 2023. He was recently the 2018-21 Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology. Ritchie’s work was included in the 1997 Whitney Biennial, the 2002 Sydney Biennale, the 2004 Bienal de Sao Paulo, the 2008 Seville Bienal, the Havana Bienal, and the 11th International Architecture Biennial, Venice, Italy (2008) as well as major exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston, MA among others. Ritchie lives and works in New York.

About Phoenix College
Phoenix College is the flagship of the Maricopa County Community College District, one of the largest community college districts in the nation. Established in 1920, PC offers academic courses leading to associate degrees, university transfer, certificates and short-term job training.

The Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) is an EEO/AA institution and an equal opportunity employer of protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or national origin. A lack of English language skills will not be a barrier to admission and participation in the career and technical education programs of the District. The Maricopa County Community College District does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability or age in its programs or activities. For Title IX/504 concerns, call the following number to reach the appointed coordinator: (480) 731-8499. For additional information, as well as a listing of all coordinators within the Maricopa College system, maricopa.edu/non-discrimination.

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PHOENIX (September 25, 2023) – Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) announces the renewal of the David and Dawn Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative, made possible through a gift of $250,000 from the Arizona-based family. The Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative seeks to deepen the Museum’s commitment to contemporary art and elevate the institution’s profile on a national scale through an annual artist lecture series, the designation of a contemporary art gallery, and the acquisition of contemporary artworks by artists in the field. Established in 2017, the initiative was expanded in 2021 to support the diversification of PhxArt’s contemporary art collection through the acquisition of works by artists contributing to discourses on race, gender, and other socially relevant concerns, including those by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and women artists, among others. This recent gift ensures the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative will continue for an additional five years in support of the Museum’s contemporary art acquisitions and education programs. It brings overall support of the Lenhardt Contemporary Initiative to more than $1 million since the program’s inception.

“We are deeply grateful to Dawn and David Lenhardt for renewing their support of an initiative that has not only allowed us to diversify our contemporary art holdings but provided valuable opportunities for intellectual exchange and community-building through art,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Through the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative, the Museum has acquired six outstanding works that have brought a diversity of perspective and creative expression to our contemporary art collection. We have also welcomed numerous internationally renowned artists and thought leaders to the Valley, enabling our audiences and the local artist community to engage with significant figures in the field of global contemporary art. We look forward to advancing these efforts, in partnership with the Lenhardt family, over the next five years.”

“Dawn and I are thrilled to continue our support of the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative at Phoenix Art Museum,” said David Lenhardt, vice-chair of the Museum’s Board of Trustees. “We remain dedicated to supporting the Museum in its mission to become an inclusive space of belonging, where everyone can see themselves reflected in the art on the walls or the programs in the galleries. It has been a pleasure to witness the initiative expand over the past five years in the pursuit of this goal, and we are excited to see what more the Museum can achieve.”

The flagship program of the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative is the semiannual Lenhardt Lecture, presented each spring and fall at Phoenix Art Museum. The program features a presentation by or conversation with emerging and internationally renowned contemporary artists. Additionally, Lenhardt Lecture speakers are asked to participate in arts-education opportunities with the community. Since the inaugural Lenhardt Lecture in 2018, the Museum has welcomed artists Jim Hodges, Shara Hughes, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Arcmanoro Niles, Teresita Fernández, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Derek Fordjour, Rashid Johnson, and, in 2023, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe in conversation with curator and cultural critic Larry Ossei-Mensah.

Additionally, the initiative supports the expansion and diversification of the Museum’s contemporary art collection. Since 2017, the Lenhardt family’s generosity has enabled the Museum to acquire artworks by Shara Hughes, Arcmanoro Niles, Derek Fordjour, Rashid Johnson, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, and Lily Stockman. For high-resolution images of select works, click here.

The Lenhardt Gallery, located within the Museum’s Ellen and Howard C. Katz Wing for Modern Art, also remains dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary art, with rotating displays of artworks from the Museum’s collection and significant loans from national and Phoenix collectors.

“In a few short years, the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative has had palpable and important impacts on the Museum’s collection and programmatic focus,” said Olga Viso, the Selig Family Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at PhxArt. “It has fueled the Museum’s larger institutional priorities around program and audience development and has brought artists of national and international renown to the Greater Phoenix Metro Area to engage directly with audiences and our thriving local artist community.”

For more information or interviews, contact the Museum’s Communications Office at samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 19,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

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