X-TRA Presents: Like Spiders Spinning Light a conversation between David Weldzius, Britt Salvesen, and Jon Leaver, Saturday, December 17th, 2023.

A conversation around “Like Spiders Spinning Light: Reflections on Jacqueline de la Baume Dürrbach’s Guernica Tapestry at the UN,” written by artist David Weldzius for X-TRA Volume 24, Number 2. During the conversation, Weldzius will be joined by X-TRA Editor Jon Leaver and LACMA Curator Britt Salvesen, who will reflect on the duplication and circulation of the Guernica Tapestry by Jacqueline de la Baume Dürrbach.

Doors open at 5 pm

Read Weldzius’s essay, “Like Spiders Spinning Light: Reflections on Jacqueline de la Baume Dürrbach’s Guernica Tapestry at the UN” here.

David Weldzius is an artist based in Los Angeles. He has exhibited at Kordansky Gallery, MAK Center, and Stephen Cohen Gallery, among other venues. In 2012, he was an artist resident at the Terra Foundation of American Art in Giverny, France. His work is in the collection of the California Museum of Photography. David’s work has received critical attention from writer Jan Tumlir and art historian Eric Mazariegos, Jr. To date, David has published two essays with X-TRA. David teaches courses in photography and printmaking at Occidental College, Los Angeles.

Britt Salvesen is the curator and department head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints & Drawings Department at LACMA. Recent exhibitions include *3D: Double Vision* (2018) and *City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907* (with Leah Lehmbeck and Vannessa R. Schwartz, 2022).

Jon Leaver is a Professor of Art History at the University of La Verne, and editor for X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal. Born in the UK where he studied and began his teaching career, he moved to California 20 years ago. His research covers a wide range of art history and visual culture from nineteenth-century French painting to the contemporary art of Los Angeles. He has written extensively on the painter Édouard Manet, and the art critic Charles Baudelaire, as well as subjects as diverse as the aesthetics of soccer and the history of World’s Fairs and Expositions.