Artist and Kenyon parent Erik Schurink will speak as a Mesaros Visiting Artist on Thursday, Feb. 26, at 11:10 a.m. in Horvitz Hall Room 220. He also will visit “Back to the Drawing Board,” a class taught by Associate Professor of Art Read Baldwin ’84, to critique student projects designed around his visit.
Schurink is the director of exhibits at the Long Island Children’s Museum, where he oversees and manages its 15 galleries. He also has worked at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and completed independent projects for the Museum of Manhattan and the Museum of American Folk Art, among others. A poet and co-founder of Koo Dance, he has taught at New York University and Bank Street College of Education. He also contributes to “Abecedarium,” a blog about the history, geography and culture of New York City.
Schurink, whose daughter, Emma Schurink ’17, was in Baldwin’s class last semester, connected with Baldwin at Family Weekend. Baldwin invited Schurink to speak to his students and to the public during the spring semester and collaborated with him to organize a special assignment for Baldwin’s class.
“The idea was to have them work in small groups and choose a children’s book that they loved,” Baldwin said. The students designed a museum exhibit related to the book using a fictional budget of $300,000 and will pitch their plan to Schurink.
After critiquing the students’ projects, Schurink will give a public talk about his personal history with art. “He’s a real renaissance man,” Baldwin said. “What [Schurink] brings is a life of making a living in the arts, doing really creative things.”
Schurink’s visit is made possible by the Mesaros Art Fund, established in 1993 through a gift from physicians Paul and Laura Mesaros to bring artists and speakers in various artistic fields to Kenyon.
By Madeleine Thompson ’15