The dense language and insider nature of contemporary art can befuddle even the most intelligent of us, but that shouldn’t ruin our enjoyment of it. Canadian art educator Sheila Greenspan offers a chance to learn the basics of art appreciation in an interactive workshop with gallerists from m97, OV Gallery and ShanghART providing a look behind the scenes of contemporary art.

Class Format

The first hour and a half of the class will be a workshop taught by Sheila Greenspan, the remaining half hour will be a short informal talk by the gallerist with a question and answer session. After class we’ll continue the discussion over a tasty meal at a nearby restaurant.

Topics

Sheila Greenspan will work with participants to help them develop their analytical skills so that they have the ability to talk about and understand art without any prior knowledge of a particular art tradition. The class is very dynamic and involves a great deal of group work and participation.

The gallerists will provide background on contemporary art and collecting. Rebecca Catching will explore trends and movements in contemporary art in Shanghai. Steven Harris will explore trends and movements in photography and talk about the issues of collecting photography including editions and authenticity. Lorenz Helbling will look at the idea of collecting, what collectors have bought in the past and what they haven’t bought in the context of ShanghART’s New Art Warehouse.

Instructors

Sheila Greenspan
Sheila has an M.A. in Art History and an M.A. in Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. She was the Head of Education, Outreach and Public Programming for the Art Gallery of Hamilton for 15 years and then was similarly the Head of Education, Outreach and Public Programming for the Art Gallery of Ontario. Currently she teaches at Dundas Valley School of Art in Dundas.

Rebecca Catching
Director OV Gallery, Rebecca has a background in East Asian studies and art history and worked as an arts & entertainment editor for local culture magazine that’s Shanghai for five years, while freelancing for a number of international publications such as Art Asia Pacific, Art Review, Flash Art and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Rebecca’s latest curatorial projects include “Make-Over” an exploration the great renovation of Shanghai in advance of the Expo and the issues of history, image and face which accompany it.

Steven Harris
Steven Harris is the founder and director of m97 Gallery in Shanghai. A former photographer with a journalism and Chinese studies background, Steven has lived in China for most of the past ten years. He founded m97 Gallery in 2006 as a dedicated platform for contemporary photography, and it now represents over 30 Chinese and international artists, including world-renowned Michael Wolf, Nadav Kander, Han Lei, Wang Ningde, and Jiang Zhi, as well as young new talent such as Chen Wei and Zeng Han, to name a few.

Lorenz Helbling
Lorenz Helbling was born in Switzerland and earned a degree in art history at the University of Zurich. Afterwards he studied Chinese at Shanghai’s Fudan University, majoring in Chinese history and film. In the Spring of 1996, he opened the influential ShanghART Gallery and has curated over 60 exhibitions. In 2005, ShanghART was selected as the only gallery from China to be featured in “International Art Galleries, Post-War to Post-Millennium, a narrative chronology of the dealers, artists and spaces that have defined modern art” (Dumont, 2005) and in 2006, Helbling was listed in ArtReview's Power 100 list.

1 class 300 RMB

All 3 classes for 850 RMB

All classes include dinner at nearby restaurant