Josephine Halvorson will give a lecture on her work and process as an artist working from direct observation, foregrounding the firsthand experience of noticing, describing, and learning from the physical world.

Josephine Halvorson makes art from direct observation, foregrounding the firsthand experience of noticing, describing, and learning from the physical world. The result is an intimate portrait of the object, capturing both a natural likeness as well as the often unseen or overlooked character of her chosen subject. She works primarily in painting, but also in sculpture and printmaking.

Halvorson received her MFA from Columbia University in 2007, her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2003, and attended Yale Norfolk in 2002. She is the recipient of several international residencies and fellowships, including a US Fulbright to Vienna, Austria; the Harriet Hale Woolley Award at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, France; the first American pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici; and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Halvorson’s work is represented by Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, NY, and Peter Freeman, Paris. She has presented work internationally at such institutions as the Storm King Art Center, the ICA Boston, and the Havana Biennale. In 2021, she presented a solo exhibition of site-responsive work at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM, where she was the Museum’s first artist in residence. In 2024, she presented a solo exhibition at James Fuentes, Los Angeles, accompanied by a paperback monograph.

View the Josephine Halvorson publication.

The book documents Halvorson’s group of new paintings, alongside writing and Polaroids documenting the timelines and contexts of their making. In a new essay, Jarrett Earnest writes in real-time alongside the making of a single work over the course of ten days. With a foreword from photographer Justine Kurland.

The Agnes Rindge Claflin Lecture series is sponsored by the Vassar Art Department. 

Individuals requiring accommodations or accessibility information should contact the Campus Activities Office, (845) 437-5370.

This event is free and open to the public.