Mr. Storr will announce his latest plans for the exhibition, whose working title is Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque.

Robert Storr was appointed, in September 2002, the first Rosalee Solow Professor of Modern Art at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Prior to this position he served, since 1990, as a curator at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, including, most recently as senior curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture. Among the exhibitions Storr curated for MoMA are Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting (2002), Chuck Close (1998), and Tony Smith: Architect, Painter, Sculptor (1998). In August 2002, Storr was named the curator of SITE Santa Fe’s Fifth International Biennial.

Opening for a six-month run in July 2004, this biennial will focus on the grotesque, which Storr defines as the full manifestation of the contradictions that idealism suppresses. The exhibition will examine a cross-section of recent work that highlights the paradox of the grotesque. Storr explores the concept as a sensibility rather than a style, and poses the grotesque as a way in which artists choose to deal with irresolvable contradictions. The results may be fanciful or nightmarish; playful or sinister; refined or vulgar.

SITE Santa Fe’s Art & Culture series is supported in part by Dottie and Dick Barrett, Bobbie Foshay-Miller and Chuck Miller, Katherine and James Gentry, Emily Fisher Landau, Lannan Foundation, LLWW Foundation, and Barbara and Michael Ogg. This announcement is partially funded by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers’ Tax.