Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania… Artist Ranjani Shettar, featured in Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International, will talk about her work on July 15, 2008, 6:30-7:30 p.m., in the Carnegie Lecture Hall. The presentation is free to the public.

On July 15 and 16, Shettar will also discuss her work and artistic process as part of a two-day teacher workshop on aesthetics, co-organized by Carnegie Museum of Art, The Andy Warhol Museum, and the Arts Education Collaborative.

Born in Bangelore, India, in 1977, and still living and working there, Shettar is known for work that is both ethereal and architectural. Just a bit more, on view in the Carnegie International, is a room-sized installation of molded beeswax balls that have been pressed onto a network of tea-dyed threads and suspended in sheets from the ceiling.

Shettar started as a figurative sculptor, but as she became more interested in the microworld, her work moved toward abstraction.

Carnegie International curator Douglas Fogle has worked with Ranjani Shettar before. In 2003, Fogle, then curator at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, invited the artist to participate in his exhibition Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age.

The Carnegie International
First organized by the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1896, the Carnegie International is the oldest exhibition of global contemporary art in North America. Celebrating its 55th installment, this year's exhibition explores the question of what it means to be human in the world today through the varied perspectives of 40 artists, spanning generations and continents. Works are presented in a diverse range of media, from painting, sculpture, and drawing to animation, film installation, and performance.

Support
Major support for the 2008 Carnegie International has been provided by the A.W. Mellon Charitable and Educational Fund, Friends of the Carnegie International, The Henry L. Hillman Fund, The Fine Foundation, and the Jill and Peter Kraus Endowment for Contemporary Art. Major gifts have also been provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, Bayer Corporation, the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Kraus Family Foundation, the Dimitris Daskalopoulos Collection, Greece, The Fellows of Carnegie Museum of Art, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Woodmere Foundation. Additional support for the exhibition is provided by Heika Burnison, The Broad Art Foundation, the William Talbott Hillman Endowment for Photography, the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, Maja Oeri and Hans Bodenmann, William I. and Patricia S. Snyder, the Alexander C. & Tillie S. Speyer Foundation, the Buncher Family Foundation, Sibyl Fine King, Wendy Mackenzie and Alexander Cortesi, the National Endowment for the Arts, Kathy and Richard Fuld, Jr., the Morby Family Charitable Foundation, Erica and Eric Schwartz, The Associates of Carnegie Museum of Art, the Beal Publication Fund, the Dedalus Foundation, the Dobkin Family Foundation, The Grable Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, the LLWW Foundation, the James H. and Idamae B. Rich Exhibition Fund, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Carnegie Museum of Art
Located at 4400 Forbes Avenue, in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art was founded in 1895 by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. One of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, it is nationally and internationally recognized for its distinguished collection of American and European works from the 16th century to the present. The Heinz Architectural Center, part of Carnegie Museum of Art, is dedicated to the collection and exhibition of architectural representations and to the study of all aspects of the built environment. For more information about Carnegie Museum of Art, the public may call 412.622.3131 or visit www.cmoa.org.