Kate Shepherd and Tyler Green

Breaking It Down: Conversations from the Vault is a deep dive and a new take on key artists in the collection and the support given to them by the Phillips. In this spirit of foregrounding the artist’s career, The Phillips Collection hosts a series of conversations between artists and their greatest supporters, as selected by the artist. 

Join us for a conversation with artist Kate Shepherd and historian and critic Tyler Green.

This event takes place during Third Thursdays. Visit the galleries for free from 5-8 pm.

Kate Shepherd 

Known for her richly colored paintings built with multiple layers of monochromatic enamel, Shepherd’s decades-long exploration of perspectival space made with linear constructions, hand-painted with a tiny brush. At the same time, she investigates the relationship of her paintings to their environs; the various reflective surfaces establishing a spatial discourse between the panel, the viewer, and the gallery space. The exterior elements of chance jibe with various depictions of architectural spaces which are, at their core, simple proposition of spacial interactions. Viewers see their own reflections which can guard her intimate line work from view. Being situationally reactive to light and movement, the paintings take on sculptural characteristics in their constant change. The artist’s oeuvre also encompasses sculpture and works on paper, all of which examine her constant exploration of the relativity of color. 

Tyler Green 

Tyler Green is an award-winning historian and critic who has produced and hosted The Modern Art Notes Podcast since 2011. Green is the author of “Carleton Watkins: Making the West American,” which won a 2019 California Book Award gold medal, and “Emerson’s ‘Nature’ and the Artists.” Green’s next book, tentatively titled “Claiming Yosemite: The Civil War, the California Genocide, and the Invention of National Parks,” is planned for 2025-26. He is also the co-founder (with Dr. Kelli Morgan) and director of The Darkwater Project, which contributes to the construction of an anti-racist US art history by revealing and interrogating historical American art’s role in the construction of white supremacy.