Happening November 30: Artists That Went Against The Grain

A Conversation with Scholar Antonia Pocock


Join Us Monday November 30, 2020

7PM ET

A conversation that begins with H.C. Westermann in Chicago, and winds its way through artists that made a practice of going against the grain. Swann Director of Modern & Post-War Art Harold Porcher will be in conversation with scholar and writer Antonia Pocock, whose writing has been published in Art in America and in numerous museum and gallery exhibition catalogues. They’ll discuss Westermann, Hedda Sterne, Robert Therrien, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, and other midcentury artists who saw possibilities where none had existed before.


Lot 69: Horace Clifford Westermann, Untitled (Alternate Catalog Cover), ink and watercolor, 1977. Estimate $10,000 to $15,000.

About the Speakers

Antonia Pocock

Antonia Pocock is a scholar of modern and contemporary art based in Brooklyn. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 2020. Previously, she held fellowships and curatorial positions at the Menil Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, the Bruce Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her writing has been published in Art in America and in numerous museum and gallery exhibition catalogues. She is currently working on her first book, a study of New York Pop art and Chicago Imagism in the context of cultural tensions between elitism and populism, and between the East coast and the Midwest.


Harold Porcher

Harold Porcher directs Swann Galleries’ Modern and Post-War Art sales, having joined Swann in the winter of 2020 to aid in the expansion of the house’s fine art offerings. Studying biology at The College of Charleston, Harold shifted his focus to fine art and relocated to New York City in 1989. In the following years he served as the Director of Sid Deutsch Gallery, the Gallery Manager at Snyder Fine Art, and worked as a private dealer with his New York–based gallery, Sage Fine Art. The auction bug bit him in 2002 when he consulted for Wright in Chicago for two years.


Lot 53: Allan Kaprow, Untitled, oil and collage on canvas, circa 1955. Estimate $10,000 to $15,000.

Learn About Future Events

Stay in touch: opt-in to Auction Updates for email reminders about auction dates, when new catalogues are posted, sale highlights and exhibition openings; sign up for our newsletter to get periodic auction news and highlights; or download our live bidding app to browse, bid and livestream sales on the go.