Past Event: Nell Painter and Vivian Gornick in Conversation

Join historian-turned-artist Nell Painter for an intimate conversation with acclaimed writer Vivian Gornick about the joys and challenges of turning one's lived experiences into written narrative. In her new book, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over (Counterpoint, June 2018), Painter explores questions of gender, race, and what it means to be an artist through her journey of attending art school after her retirement from Princeton University as an American history professor.

Book signing to follow.  

About the Speakers:
Vivian Gornick is a prolific memoirist, essayist, and biographer. Her latest memoir, The Odd Woman in the City (2015), is a narrative collage of stories of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time. Other works by Gornick include her bestselling memoir, Fierce Attachments; The Men in My Life; The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative; Emma Goldman: The Revolution as a Way of Life; and The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Nell Painter is a practicing artist and the Edwards Professor Emeritus of American History at Princeton University specializing in Southern history. In addition to Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over, Painter's many books include The History of White People; Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present; Sojourner Truth, a Life, a Symbol; and Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919.

This event is part of Core Conversations, a series of lectures, talks, and tours in which New York City's leading thinkers examine the four key themes of our New York at Its Core exhibition -- diversity, density, money, and creativity -- each through their own unique lens. To view all of the programs in the series, click here.