Structure, Not Sculpture: Rasheed Araeen 1964-1975
When: October 29, 2026, 6–7 pm ET
Where: Yale Club of New York City, 50 Vanderbilt Avenue
About this program
In the second lecture of this two-part series, join Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Executive Director Courtney J. Martin as she discusses Rasheed Araeen’s concept of participatory transformation.
Central to the seminal artist’s mid-career and later work were his early sculptures, which he defined as structures. Alongside an otherwise minimalist practice, Araeen began to write about his objects, shifting his definition of them as sculpture into the more sociocultural designation of structure. Structures relied on viewer engagement and invited interaction with other objects, viewers, and each other, changing the economy of space within the exhibition. These structures showed the signature of Araeen’s interest in low technology, ephemerality, roughness, and an overall surface crudeness taking shape.
A conversation will follow between Martin and Kellie Jones, Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History & Archaeology and a Professor in the Department of African American & African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.
There will be a reception at The Yale Club of New York City following the talk.
Click here to view the dress code for the Yale Club of New York City.
About the speakers
Courtney J. Martin became the Executive Director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in 2024. Previously, she was the Paul Mellon Director of the Yale Center for British Art. An art historian, curator, and professor, Martin began working with the New York-based Dia Art Foundation in 2015 and was appointed deputy director and chief curator in 2017. She previously taught at Brown University and worked at the Ford Foundation. She earned a PhD in art history from Yale University. She is on the board of directors of the Henry Moore Foundation, the Chinati Foundation, and the Center for Curatorial Leadership.
Kellie Jones is Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History & Archaeology and a professor in the Department of African American & African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latinx and Latin American artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016, she was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Jones’s writings have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues and journals. She is the author of several books and the co-editor of Black Curators Matter: Conversations on Art and Change, forthcoming from Getty Publications in 2026.
About the Paul Mellon Lectures
Established in 1994, the Paul Mellon Lectures were names in honor of Paul Mellon (Yale College Class of 1929), the philanthropist, art collector, and founder of both the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art Studies in London and the Yale Center for British Art. Co-organized by the two institutions, the biennial lectures have traditionally been given by a specialist in British art, first in London and then at Yale.
Image Credit: Rasheed Araeen, Zero to Infinity in Venice, 2016-17, installation view, Arsenale, 57th Venice Biennale. ©LOUISA GOULIAMAKI, Image courtesy Getty Images Entertainment