The Summer Series program features some of the most influential artists of our time, exploring the work of world-renowned creators in conversation with today’s leading critics, curators, and collectors. Join us for a conversation in Schermer Meeting Hall at Anderson Ranch Arts Center with Athena LaTocha and Valerie Cassel Oliver.

Summer Series lectures are free, open to the public, and available in person or via livestream.

Athena LaTocha (b. Anchorage, Alaska) is an artist whose works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, soils and wood, looking at mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. Her works are informed by her upbringing in the wilderness of Alaska. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments, while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic histories that are rooted in place.

Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2000-2017). At the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Cassel Oliver organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012) and major survey exhibitions for Donald Moffett; Benjamin Patterson, Jennie C. Jones, Angel Otero and Annabeth Rosen.