Student-assisted art installations showcase work by Pat Steir

Teresa Parker Farris tpfarris@tulane.edu
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Installation of

Students followed a three-dimensional model to help create "Self Portrait" by Pat Steir. (Photos by Paula Burch-Celentano)


An exhibit of two site-specific wall drawing installations by internationally renowned artist Pat Steir has opened at the Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane University. The large-scale works, “Endless Line” and “Self Portrait,” executed in part with assistance by Tulane art studio students, will be on view through June 16.

Steir has described her works this way: “Installation allows the artist to paint out of the painting and into space, and the viewer to move from space into a painting — the space where the act of painting takes place is in the imagination of the viewer.”

“Endless Line,” a variation on works previously at New York's Whitney Museum and Berlin's Galerie Thomas Schulte, appear in the gallery's two side rooms. An undulating line floats across walls washed with six layers of transparent blue paint and segmented with an expansive red grid.

The gallery's back room displays “Self Portrait,” a work originally at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 1987 and subsequently at venues in Canada and Europe.

Steir created "Self Portrait" using Renaissance-era sketches of facial features and Albrecht Dürer depictions of the body, redrawn onto walls in an enlarged format.

Artist Pat Steir at Newcomb Art Gallery.

Artist Pat Steir directs the installation of her work “Endless Line” at the Newcomb Art Gallery.


Working from a three-dimensional model Steir used to design the show, Tulane art students, artist volunteers and Steir's assistants helped execute the project.

The collaboration focused on rendering a catalogue of large-scale ears, eyes and noses from Steir's original images projected onto the gallery walls.

The anonymity of the facial features echoes the depersonalized artist's hand in the installation process.

The opening reception is from 6–8 p.m. today at the gallery, located in the Woldenberg Art Center on the Tulane uptown campus.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. until 4 p.m.

Teresa Parker Farris is marketing coordinator for the Newcomb Art Gallery.