On the occasion of Printed Matter’s current exhibition Pati Hill: My old fur coat doesn’t know me, join us for a conversation on Hill’s life and practice with Richard Torchia (Director of Arcadia Exhibitions), journalist & critic Arthur Lubow, and Hill’s friend, artist Terry Blum. The group will discuss Hill’s bodies of work across xerography and writing, her important friendships with artists and writers throughout her life (Diane Arbus and James Merrill, to name a few), and the ways in which her own identity as a woman, housewife, and mother shaped her practice.

Learn more about the exhibition here, and browse publications by Hill here.

Pati Hill: My old fur coat doesn’t know me is curated by Baptiste Pinteaux (publisher of the Paris-based imprint Daisy and the art journal octopus notes), and produced with the assistance of the Pati Hill Collection at Arcadia University (Glenside, PA) and gallery Air de Paris.

Participant bios:

Richard Torchia is the director of Arcadia Exhibitions, Arcadia University (Glenside, Pennsylvania). There he has presented solo exhibitions and projects for artists such as Ai Weiwei, Polly Apfelbaum, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Ray Johnson, Quentin Morris, and Kay Rosen along with numerous thematic group shows, including exhibitions featuring artist’s books and publications designed by writers, both facilitated by Printed Matter. In 2016 he curated the first posthumous exhibition for Pati Hill, a survey focusing on the xerographs and books she produced between 1974 and 1983. Since 2017 he has overseen Hill’s archive housed at Arcadia University. In addition to independent publishing projects, including an historical index of Philadelphia-based artist-run spaces, Torchia has maintained an artistic practice employing optical devices.

Arthur Lubow is a journalist and critic who writes mainly about culture. He has been a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He is the author of The Reporter Who Would be King, a life of the turn-of-the-century American war correspondent Richard Harding Davis, Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer, and Man Ray: The Artist and His Shadows. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library, Lubow is the winner of a James Beard Award and a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He lives in New York City and East Haddam, Connecticut.

Terry Blum is a pioneer in the use of the computer as an artist’s medium. As early as 1980, she began using emerging programs to produce her own work, leading to a dedication to the creative exploration of new media and new technology with a particular emphasis on educational opportunities for students in the public sector. She was responsible for establishing the Computer Graphics department at FIT/SUNY in 1982, one of the first in New York City, and designed and taught the first studio course in Computer Assisted Design. She developed a proposal for a BFA in Computer Animation & Interactive Media in 1997 and received a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to help launch the program in 1999. Terry was the Director - Animation, Interactive Media & Game Design - 2000-2023 at FIT, an evolution from her studies in painting at Boston University’s School of Fine Arts and the deCordova Museum.

During this time her work was featured in exhibitions and invitationals in Europe, including, ELECTRA – Musee d’ Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1983), Venice Biennale, “L’ Imaggine Elettronica” (1983), the ARTWARE Exhibitions – International Congress, Hamburg, (1985), among others. Her work also appears in various publications both here and in Europe.