The Modern’s Chief Curator Michael Auping and Texas Monthly film critic Christopher Kelly will moderate a conversation with renowned artist and award-winning filmmaker Julian Schnabel.

A major Neo-Expressionist figure in New York in the 1980s known for his large-scale plate paintings, Schnabel’s practice also includes sculpture, installation, writing, furniture design, and filmmaking. Auping has said, “Many of us that participated in the New York art world of the 1980s—the largeness of it, the ambitions—we think of Julian Schnabel.” Schnabel’s ambitious paintings from that decade play a central role in the Modern’s special exhibition Urban Theater: New York Art in the 1980s.

Schnabel’s critically acclaimed filmmaking career began in 1996 with Basquiat, a riveting examination of the tragically short life of his close friend, the late painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2000, his film adaptation of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas’s autobiography, Before Night Falls, earned Javier Bardem an Academy Award nomination for his powerful portrayal in the title role. For his 2007 film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Schnabel was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, received the Golden Globe, and was named Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. His most recent film, Miral, was nominated for the Golden Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival.