The Shape of Ideas: Sean Scully

Phong H. Bui is an artist, writer, independent curator, and Co-Founder and Publisher/Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Rail, Rail Editions, River Rail and Rail Curatorial Projects.

David Carrier taught philosophy in Pittsburgh and art history in Cleveland. He writes art criticism. His In Caravaggio’s Shadow: Naples as a Work of Art (London, 2025) is forthcoming.

Writer, artist, critic, art historian, curator, and educator Robert C. Morgan PhD is knowledgeable in the history and aesthetics of both Western and Asian art, Morgan has lectured widely, written hundreds of critical essays (translated into twenty languages), published monographs and books, and curated numerous exhibitions. His writing has been published in Art in America, Arts, Art News, Art Press (Paris), Sculpture Magazine, and Hyperallergic. He is Professor Emeritus in Art History at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of several books, published in the United States and in Europe and Asia. He writes about art for the Brooklyn Rail and is regarded by some as a hard-edge painter.

Independent scholar and art advisor Raphy Sarkissian’s connoisseurship and democratic interest in “prominent” and “marginal” contemporary art span beyond two decades. After experimenting with photography in Milan and matriculating at the International Center of Photography in New York, Sarkissian pursued fine arts at New York University. He further advanced his studies of art history at Columbia University and CUNY Graduate Center. He has taught at New Paltz State University of New York and Pace University and is currently affiliated with the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Amanda Sroka joined the museum in 2014 following the completion of her MA in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London where her research focused on global conceptual art practices. Previously, she served as a curatorial assistant at the New Museum, New York. Recent projects at the Philadelphia Museum of Art include Martine Syms: Neural Swamp (2022); Senga Nengudi: Topologies (2021), Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas (2021); Fault Lines: Contemporary Abstraction by Artists from South Asia (2020), Marisa Merz (2019), Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned (2018), among others. Forthcoming projects include solo projects with Zoe Leonard and Lawrence Abu Hamdan.

New York-based artist and writer David Rhodes is originally from Manchester, UK. His most recent solo exhibition Aletheia was at High Noon Gallery, New York in January 2024. His paintings are in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Huntington Museum, Los Angeles, among others. He has published catalog essays for Michael Werner Gallery, New York, Karma Gallery, New York and Museum Ludwig, Köln. He is an Editor-at-Large at the Brooklyn Rail.