Kemper Art Museum to present panel discussion on ‘Window | Interface’

Artist Peter Campus to join curators Eckmann, Koepnick

Groundbreaking video artist Peter Campus will participate in a panel discussion at 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 31, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium, that is being held in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition “Window | Interface.”

He will be joined by the exhibition’s co-curators, Sabine Eckmann, Ph.D., director and chief curator for the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, and Lutz Koepnick, Ph.D., the museum’s curator for new media and professor of German and of film and media studies, both in Arts & Sciences.

“Window | Interface,” which features works by Campus, explores the ways in which electronic windows and interfaces — for example, video screens, computer monitors and cell phone displays — have come to structure the practice and experience of art today.

The exhibition opens immediately after the panel discussion with a reception from 7 to 10 p.m. in the Kemper Art Museum.

Campus is a pioneer in both video art and computer-enhanced digital photography. In the early 1970s, his experimentation with studio shooting and video technology — in works such as “Prototype for Interface” (1972), included in the exhibition — opened up a vast new set of tools for artistic practice while advancing the conceptual potential of video art.

Campus’ closed-circuit installations, videotapes and photography have been exhibited internationally, with one-person shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York, and at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

Major group exhibitions include the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel, Germany. He is a clinical associate professor of art and art education as well as artist-in-residence at New York University.

Both the panel discussion and the reception are free and open to the public. “Window | Interface” will remain on view through Nov. 5. Regular hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed Tuesdays.

For more information, call 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.