Curator Talk with Leisa Rundquist: Rethinking Gender and Fluidity in Realms of the Unreal

Saturday, July 1, 2017
2 p.m.
Free and open to public

In conjunction with the exhibition, Betwixt-and-Between: Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls, guest curator, Leisa Rundquist explores aspects of gender conformity and transgression in the Realms of the Unreal.  Juxtaposing the artist’s favored images of little girls from pop culture and his transformation of these representations into nude children with intersexed characteristics, Rundquist locates ways in which girlhood is constructed, resisted, and even transcended in Darger’s art.

Leisa Rundquist, an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina Asheville, received her Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2007.  Rundquist’s research is primarily concerned with the intersections of childhood, religious piety, gender, and race in the art of Henry Darger.