The Maier Museum of Art’s 99th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Four American Landscapes: Sang-ah Choi, Jeffrey Jones, Andrew Lenaghan and Joel Ross, opens the weekend of January 23 and 24 with a variety of events, all free and open to the public:

Saturday, January 23

5 to 7 p.m. Opening Reception for the 99th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art. Meet the exhibition’s guest curator, Jonathan Fineberg, Gutgsell Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the four artists included in the exhibition.

7 p.m. Screening of Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art, a two-hour PBS television special based on the book by Jonathan Fineberg and John Carlin.

Sunday,  January 24

2 p.m. 19th Annual Helen Clark Berlind Symposium panel discussion moderated by Jonathan Fineberg. For the 99th Annual Exhibition, Fineberg selected four contemporary artists whose work bears witness to and at times suggests critical issues about American cultural identity, as visible in the American landscape. By turns beautiful, critical, and humorous, the work of each artist articulates a unique view of natural and human-made scenery offering various descriptions of American values and preoccupations. Panelists will be the artists featured in the exhibition: Sang-ah Choi, Jeffrey Jones, Andrew Lenaghan and Joel Ross. A reception will follow.

Jonathan Fineberg is recipient of the Pulitzer Fellowship in Critical Writing, the NEA Art Critics’ Fellowship, and the College Art Association’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in the History of Art. He has curated major exhibitions in the United States and abroad and has published articles in numerous exhibition catalogs, journals, and newspapers ranging from Artforum to The New York Times. He specializes in modern and contemporary art, with a particular interest in emerging artists and in the psychology of art. In addition to Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art, Fineberg’s books include: Christo and Jeanne-Claude: On the Way to the Gates (Yale), The Innocent Eye: Children’s Art and the Modern Artist (Princeton), and Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being (Prentice Hall and The People’s University Press, Beijing).