Quotable Talk | Ara H. Merjian

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Sarasota Art Museum presents an inspiring lineup of great writers with great stories to tell through its annual author series. Hear directly from authors, artists, and contemporary creatives who are sparking new ways of thinking about art, culture, and creative practices. For those who appreciate remarkable creativity, a pioneering spirit, or are in search of inspiration, we invite you to join us and become quotable.

Ara H. Merjian is an art historian, critic, and Professor of Italian Studies at NYU, where he is an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts and Comparative Literature. He was educated at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley, where he studies under T.J. Clark. He is the author and editor of several books, including Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche, Modernism, Paris (Yale University press, 2014), Against the Avant-Garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Contemporary Art, Neo-Capitalism (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Surrealism and Anti-fascism (Hatje Cantz, 2024), and Futurism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Before arriving at NYU in 2008, he taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the San Quentin State Penitentiary College Education Program. His book from Yale University Press, Fragments of Totality: Futurism, Fascism, and the Sculptural Avant-Garde won the 2025 Robert Motherwell Book Award and the 2025 Scaglione Prize from the Modern Language Association. His latest book, Beat, Black, Queer: Pasolini’s Other America will come out with Verso next year. He writes criticism for the Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, and Artforum.

Following the talk, Merjian will sign copies of his book Helen Frankenthaler: The Moment and the Distance, available for purchase in the Museum’s SHOP.

About the Book

Helen Frankenthaler: The Moment and the Distance (Gagosian/Rizzoli, 2026) documents an exhibition of large-scale paintings by Helen Frankenthaler made between 1960 and 1992. Throughout her career, Frankenthaler pushed beyond the boundaries of easel painting to create extraordinary, monumental works, some of which occupied the entire expanse of her studio floor. This exhibition explores the artist’s use of scale across four decades of painting. The title is derived from a 1975 review by poet and critic Barbara Guest, where she remarks on Frankenthaler’s “astonishing combination of freedom with restraint, extravagance with discipline, suggestion and definition,” concluding, “the moment becomes the distance.” The book is anchored by a new essay by art historian Ara H. Merjian, who discusses the works in the show in the context of Frankenthaler’s Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist influences.