Writer, Cultural Critic to Give Shenkman Lecture
March 14, 2013 - News Release
Dave Hickey, a writer and art and cultural critic, will explain why bigger isn’t always better during the seventh annual Shenkman Lecture on Contemporary Art March 20, 6 p.m., in War Memorial Hall.
Held by the School of Fine Art and Music (SOFAM), the lecture is free and open to the public.
During his talk, entitled “It Takes a Village to Make Bad Art,” Hickey will discuss the downside of economies of scale in art practice and art education in an age of global art and the digital global village.
A former English professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and professor of criticism in the department of art and art history at the University of New Mexico, Hickey wrote The Invisible Dragon and Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy.
He has written for Rolling Stone, Art News, Playboy, London Review of Books, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harper's and Vanity Fair.
Hickey has served as art curator at galleries in New York City and Austin, Texas; executive director of Art in America magazine in New York City; and contributing editor for The Village Voice.
He has received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, an honorary degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and the Peabody Award for public journalism.
The Shenkman lectures are funded through a donation by Dasha Shenkman, a Canadian art collector living in the United Kingdom.
Free bus service will be provided from Toronto, leaving Mercer Union (1286 Bloor Street W.) at 2:30 p.m. and leaving Guelph at 9 p.m.
Also on March 20, SOFAM master’s students will open their campus studios from 3 to 5 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m. in Blackwood Hall, the Firehall and Alexander Hall. Visitors may view and discuss new works.
For more information, visit www.uoguelph.ca/sofam/shenkman.
For media questions, contact Communications and Public Affairs: Lori Bona Hunt, 519-824-4120, Ext. 53338, l.hunt@exec.uoguelph.ca, or Kevin Gonsalves, Ext. 56982, kgonsalves@uoguelph.ca
