A panel discusses of some of the lesser-known aspect of Merce Cunningham’s collaborative and multidisciplinary career.

**This event is free with museum admission, and Tuesdays are always free for Illinois residents.**

About the Speakers
Anna Finke grew up on a strawberry farm in northern Minnesota and attended SUNY Purchase in New York where she received a BFA in dance. She met Merce Cunningham during an internship at Jacob’s Pillow and began working with the company in 2004. She was hired as wardrobe supervisor the following year, becoming company photographer in 2006 and costume designer in 2007. She has created costumes for numerous Events and for Cunningham’s final work, Nearly 90², and her costumes for the final performances at Park Avenue Armory were profiled on Vogue magazine’s website. She toured with Merce Cunningham Dance Company for the final eight years of its existence, capturing thousands of images of the company from around the world.

Mark Jeffery is a Chicago-based performance/installation artist, curator, and teacher. Mark received his BA in visual performance from Dartington College of Arts in the United Kingdom. He was awarded a Junior Fellowship in Live Art between the University of the West of England and Arnolfini Live. He has been making collaborative and non-collaborative performance, installation, internet, screen works, and participation-based exhibitions in numerous spaces and contexts since 1993, including Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Ontological Theatre, New York; Performance Studies #15 Zagreb, Croatia; Interrupt Digital Arts Festival (Brown University); Chicago Cultural Centre; Nottdance, Nottingham; Taxi Gallery, Cambridge, UK; National Review of Live Art; Glasgow; ICA, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; Green Room, Manchester; and Chapter, Cardiff.

Mechtild Widrich works at the intersection between contemporary art and architecture, performance art and its mediation, and art in public space and the question of the public sphere, as well as on contemporary monuments and aesthetic theory. Her current project deals with global art geographies—in particular the role of modern and contemporary art in relationship to national or regional interests under global conditions. She is interested in the power and means of representation, in the broader institutional and political context of artistic production, in issues of “authentic” and “bodily” experience under mediated conditions, and in urban dynamics. Widrich is also interested in theory, in particular beauty and ugliness.

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Tags: Anna Finke, Chicago, Mark Jeffery, MCA Talk, Mechtild Widrich, More on Merce, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Near North Side