To better understand the effect of globalization on contemporary art, five international curators and critics will discuss their views at Global Compass, a free public symposium to be held on Friday, November 9, and Saturday, November 10.

Cleveland Plain Dealer art and architecture critic Steven Litt will moderate the discussions, which will be held in the West Auditorium of Oberlin College’s Science Center, beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Friday. The event will conclude with a reception at 6 p.m. Saturday at the College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum.

Five distinguished speakers will each speak for one hour, exploring how “the advent of digital communication, the reduction of international barriers, and the rise of an international economy have changed the rules of art forever,” says John Pearson, Oberlin’s Young-Hunter Professor of Studio Art, who planned the symposium.   

Global Compass participants include:

• Kay Heymer, director of the Jablonka Galerie, Cologne and Berlin
• Chrissie Iles, the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Film and Video, Whitney Museum of American Art
• Roger Christopher McDonald, deputy director/founding member, Art Initiative Tokyo
• Hans Ulrich Obrist, director of international projects, Serpentine Gallery, London
• Roberta Smith, a New York Times art critic since 1986

“By the end of the 20th century, contemporary art had truly become global in scope,” says Pearson. “New York could no longer claim its distinction as the major center of ‘new art.’ Indeed, the ‘new’ contemporary art was proliferating internationally.

“London, Berlin, Leipzig, Beijing, Tokyo, and other cities became centers of creative explosion. Further, the ‘new art’ did not appear to have just one major movement – one set of attitudes – that could claim center stage. ‘New art’ had become multicultural, multifaceted, and multiconceptual.

“The loosening of economic, cultural, political, and social-system boundaries – globalization – had broadened creative possibilities, or perhaps the very definition of art, to challenge and inspire artists everywhere,” Pearson says.

Global Compass sponsors include Oberlin’s Hewlett Mellon Presidential Discretionary Fund, the Oberlin College Art Department Baldwin Fund, Oberlin Shansi, and the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences. Additional support for this project came from alumni Cristina Delgado ’80 and Stephen Olsen ’79.

The symposium is free and open to the public. The Science Center is located at 119 Woodland Street. The Allen Memorial Art Museum is at 87 North Main Street. For more information, call 440-775-8665 or visit www.oberlin.edu/amam/GlobalCompass.htm.