Tuesday, May 9 at 5:30 p.m. at the Kate, 300 Main Street
Old Saybrook, CT 06475. Tickets $15 per film.

The Whitney Museum of American Art presented the landmark exhibition Jeff Koons: A Retrospective from June 27 to October 19, 2014. It was the largest, most comprehensive survey of Koons’s art ever assembled, spanning four decades of his career and displaying 145 works from every series, including 13 new pieces exhibited publicly for the first time.

The film follows Koons and Whitney Chief Curator, Scott Rothkopf, who conceived and organized the show, through every gallery of the exhibition. In addition, insightful interviews with Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s Director, Robert Storr, Dean Emeritus of the Yale School of Art, and Michelle Kuo, Editor of Artforum, help to deepen the investigation into Koon’s art and process.

Over the course of Koons’s long career he’s often been called the defining artist of our era. His stainless steel Rabbit, Balloon Dog, and porcelain Michael Jackson and Bubbles have become icons of popular culture. In the words of Whitney Director Adam Weinberg, Koons is “one of the most complex, lauded, criticized, polarizing, fascinating, and singular artists of our time”. He pushes every conceivable boundary and tests the limits of what defines art and the artist.

Bridging the Arts is a curated film series co-sponsored by Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts and the Kate. The series will feature a selection of art films produced by the highly-regarded Checkerboard Film Foundation and include a brief lecture before each film.