Jointly hosted by the Barry Art Museum, and the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey: a conversation between Richmond-based artist Elizabeth King and Jeremie Ryder, Guinness Collection Conservator at the Morris Museum.

Ryder has devoted a lifetime to the research and conservation of historical automata and clockwork music machines from around the world. King, whose sculpture and filmmaking have been influenced by her interest in puppets and automata, has just finished a monograph on a sixteenth-century automaton of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, to be published in 2023 by Getty Publications.

Together, they will present choice examples of artificial life from the clockwork sphere, and take viewers behind the scenes for a bit of "shop talk" about their work with these unique objects.

This talk is brought to you by ODU’s Office of Community Engagement.

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Elizabeth King is a sculptor and stop-motion filmmaker whose works address the human/machine interface and the anatomy of emotion. Her most recent solo show, "Radical Small," was on view at MASS MoCA from February 2017 through January 2018. "Double Take," a documentary film on her work by Olympia Stone, was released in 2018 and shown on PBS stations nationwide. Her recent published writing includes the essay "Inhale, Exhale, Pause: Breath and the Open Mouth in Sculpture" in the anthology Field Notes on the Visual Arts (Karen Lang, ed., Intellect, 2019). Forthcoming is her book, Mysticism & Machinery: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend, coauthored with clockmaker W. David Todd of the Smithsonian Institution, with photographs by Rosamond Purcell, expected in 2023 from Getty Publications. She is a Professor Emerita at Virginia Commonwealth University where she taught from 1985 to 2015 in the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media.

Jere Ryder brings over 50 years’ experience in the field of mechanical musical instruments and automata, including research, repair, conservation, advising collectors and museums world-wide. He’s studied and had apprenticeship-style working relationships with contemporary makers in Switzerland such as Reuge S.A. and the late Michel Bertrand (successor to J.A.F., Gustav Vichy and Auguste Triboulet, premier 19th century automata makers).

With the Morris Museum’s acquisition of the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Automatic Musical Instruments and Automata in 2003, he became the Conservator for that collection, which numbers over 750 objects and 5000+ pieces of media, the musical programming aspect of the collection. One hundred & fifty of those objects are on permanent exhibit at the museum with 2pm daily demonstrations, and it is Mr. Ryder’s responsibility to oversee and/or implement himself, required maintenance and/or conservation treatment(s) to said collection.

Working alongside the Guinness Collection Curator, he has helped create and present over 40 Guinness Collection Spotlight and Composer Series programs; co-curated 4 Guinness spin-off exhibits: Rags, Those Beautiful Rags (2013); Musically, Made in New Jersey (2015; For Amusement Only: Arcades & Cafés (2016) and Murtogh’s Music Room (2017). Following that, a 4 year series titled a Cache of Kinetic Art: Curious Characters (2018); Simply Steampunk (2019); Tiny Intricacies (2020); and Timeless Movements, which opens March 18th, 2022.