Ralph Lemon: The Fugitivity of Water

Please join the Arthur Ross Gallery and Weitzman Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania for The Fugitivity of Water, a lecture-performance by Ralph Lemon, the David Evans Family Artist-in-Residence at the Arthur Ross Gallery. This event will be held in the Kleinman Forum, 4th floor, Fisher Fine Arts Library.  Limited seating, RSVP required. Register here. 

Over the course of the summer, Lemon conducted research exploring architectural shadows, drawing on the Penn Libraries collections and the architecture of Frank Furness’s landmark Anne & Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library. This lecture-performance will integrate Lemon’s ongoing artistic exploration on water as a metaphor.

Ralph Lemon: The Fugivity of Water is realized in partnership with the Weitzman School of Design’s Department of Fine Arts and its new Penn Performance Studio. It has been curated by Emily Zimmerman, Director of Exhibitions and Curatorial Affairs at the Arthur Ross Gallery.

About Ralph Lemon
Ralph Lemon has spent more than four decades working across choreography, writing, drawing, and performance. He founded the Ralph Lemon Dance Company in 1985 and led it for a decade before pursuing long-form, research-driven projects, a turn that reshaped his practice and helped redefine the terms of postmodern performance in New York. In the years since, his work has moved fluidly between the stage, the museum, and the page, earning him recognition as one of the essential American artists of his generation.

Works by Lemon are in important public collections such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Currently he is a Visual Arts Mentor at Columbia University School of the Arts. He has held fellowships and residencies at Yale University, Stanford University, Brown University, Temple University, Princeton University, the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Among his many awards, Lemon received a 2020 MacArthur “Genius” Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In 2022 he won the Bucksbaum Award for his work included in that year’s Whitney Biennial, and in 2024 he was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Lemon received a 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. He is a 2018 recipient of the Heinz Family Foundation Award, and a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. Lemon was honored with one of the first Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards (2012); he was also one of the first artists to receive the United States Artists Fellowship (2006).

About the David Evans Family Artist Residency
The David Evans Family Artist-in-Residence program at the Arthur Ross Gallery is made possible by the generous support of David Evans. He earned his MBA at Penn’s Wharton School in 1970 and received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Muskingum College in 2008. After retiring from an investment career, he partnered in real estate development and historic home renovations.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu. Please note, we require at least five (5) business days’ notice.