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“Everyday Multitudes: Looking at Raymond Mason Now” is a panel discussion held in conjunction with the NYSS Main Gallery exhibition To Speak of Everything: The Art of Raymond Mason on view from January 10 to February 20, 2023. Moderator Christina Kee is joined by Michael Brenson, Leo Costello, and Beatrice Scaccia.

Michael Brenson is an art critic and art historian. He received a Ph.D in Art History from Johns Hopkins University and was an art critic for The New York Times from 1982 to 1991. He is a Getty Scholar, Guggenheim Fellow, and Clark Fellow, and the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction grant. His friendship with Raymond Mason began in 1971, while researching a doctoral thesis on the early work of Alberto Giacometti—Mason and Giacometti were friends. His publications on Mason include essays for Art in America and The New York Times. Brenson has been writing about modern and contemporary art for almost fifty years. His books include David Smith: The Art and Life of a Transformational Sculptor, which was published in October 2022 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is the artistic director of the Jonathan and Barbara Silver Foundation.

Leo Costello is Associate Professor of Art History at Rice University. He works primarily on European Romantic art, especially in Britain, and has published on art from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. His first book, J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History, was published by Ashgate Press in 2012. His second book, Early Turner: Seen and Unseen in London, 1795-1819, is under advance contract with Routledge. His next project will be a monograph on Raymond Mason.

Christina Kee is a New York-based artist and curator who has worked with The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation since 2011 and assisted with the organization of To Speak of Everything: The Art of Raymond Mason. She has written essays for emerging and established artists, including Karlis Rekevics, Esteban Vicente, Jill Nathanson, Jack Bush, and Graham Nickson, and contributed to the catalogue for As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings at the Clark Art Institute.

Beatrice Scaccia earned her BA and MFA at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. In 2011, she moved to New York and has had solo exhibitions at JDJ Tribeca (2022); the Katonah Museum of Art (2021); and Cuchifritos Gallery (2014). Her work has been included in group exhibitions around the world, including in Rome, Johannesburg, and Washington, D.C. Her work is present in many important public and private collections, including The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and the Portland Museum of Art.