Karl Haendel’s exhibition, Less Bad, explores various themes, from intimate experiences like fatherhood, love, friendship, and loss to broader issues such as tenderness, masculinity, introspection, and vulnerability. Haendel’s exploration of masculinity is significant and personal, challenging stereotypical definitions by emphasizing vulnerability, intimacy, and friendship. This is a dense survey of over 20 years of drawings by the artist.

About our Speakers:

Monty Paret:
Paul Monty Paret is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Utah, where he writes and teaches onmodern and contemporary art and visual culture. Paret received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2001. His published research addresses early twentieth-century European art, especially the Bauhaus School of Art and Design, and issues of land use in contemporary art.

Gretchen Dietrich:
The Marcia and John Price Executive Director, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah. Gretchen Dietrich has dedicated more than twenty years of her professional life to the field of art museums. She believes passionately in the central importance of art and museums in contemporary society and culture. Dietrich was named Executive Director of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah in August 2010. Dietrich was the Director of Education at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT, and has held various positions in exhibition planning, museum education, and public programming at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She holds an MA in art history from Temple University and a BA in art history from Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia. She is Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Utah Nonprofit Association, an elected member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and a member of the Governor-appointed Board of the State Office of Museum Services.