Eleanor Antin will read from her nearly completed book  "An Artist's Life as told by Eleanora Antinova to Eleanor Antin," along with a chapter from her memoir "Conversations with Stalin" (2013, Green Integer Press, Los Angeles).

Towards the end of her life, the once celebrated black ballerina, Eleanora Antinova, spent many hours with fellow artist, Eleanor Antin, reminiscing about her life as a ballerina and choreographer with Diaghilev's world famous Ballets-Russes and her difficult later years back home in the US as a dancer in the waning days of vaudeville. Like most artists, she had her few great moments along with her more frequent low ones struggling with an art world of hierarchies, prejudices, inequalities, and her own bad luck. She affectionately recalls the passionate intrigues and poverty of the Russian dancers along with a string of eccentric lovers from penniless counts to drunken poets. Hilariously funny and at the same time often sad and lost, like all artists, she kept reaching for the stars only to be washed away in the inexorable tsunami of history.

Eleanor Antin (USA, b. 1935) works in video, film, photography, performance, installation, drawing and writing. One-woman exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, a major retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, etc.  The exhibition Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin's "Selves" (curated by Emily Liebert and organized by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery Columbia University, New York) will be traveling to the ICA/Boston, opening March 19 2014.   Antin has been in many major group shows around the world, among them the Beaubourg, the Tate, and Documenta 12. As a performance artist she has appeared in innumerable venues including the Venice Biennale and the Sydney Opera House and her work is represented in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, Tate Modern, Art Iinstitute of Chicago, LACMA, the Loeb Family Trust,  and the Beaubourg. She has written, directed and produced many film s and videos, among them the cult feature film "The Man Without a World" (1991),  (Berlin Film Fest, USA Film Fest, Ghent Film Fest, London Jewish Film Fest, etc.). She has written several books, most recently "Conversations with Stalin" (Green Integer) and been the subject of numerous monographs and catalogues. Antin is the recipient of many awards, among them a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus of the College Art Association and an honorary doctorate from the Chicago Art Institute. She is an emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California at San Diego.