Poetry, Ekphrasis, and Art Writing in the New York School

Join us for a panel discussion with Langdon Hammer, Vincent Katz, and Prudence Peiffer, moderated by Sam Sackeroff, Art Students League Gallery Director and Curator, on the relationship between poetry and art criticism in the work of John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, and Fairfield Porter.

Langdon Hammer is Niel Gray, Jr. Professor of English Literature at Yale University. He is the author of James Merrill: Life and Art (2015) and Hart Crane and Allen Tate: Janus-Faced Modernism (1993). He is also editor, with Stephen Yenser, of A Whole World: Letters from James Merrill (2021); James Merrill: Poems (2017); The Collected Poems of May Swenson (2013); Hart Crane: Complete Poems & Selected Letters; and O My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane.

Vincent Katz is a poet, critic, curator, and translator based in New York. He is the author of fourteen books of poetry including Daffodil (2025), Broadway for Paul (2020), and Southness (2016), and the editor of Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art (2002). His poetry and criticism have appeared in Apollo, BOMB, the Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, Evergreen Review, and elsewhere. From 2010–2021, Katz was curator of the Readings in Contemporary Poetry series at Dia Art Foundation.

Prudence Peiffer is an art historian, writer, and editor specializing in modern and contemporary art. She is Director of Content at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She was a Senior Editor at Artforum from 2012–2017, and Digital Content Director at David Zwirner in 2018. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and Artforum, among other publications. Her book The Slip: The New York City Street that Changed American Art Forever (2023) was a New York Times notable book, won the New York City Book Award, was a finalist for many additional prizes, and was longlisted for the National Book Award.

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