Art and Culture Talks
2008
Marjorie L. and Ronald E. Brandon Art and Culture Talks

ACT programs will be held at the museum and other campus locations as specified.
For more information, call (518) 442-4035.
All programs are free and open to the public.

Monday, March 3
7:00 pm
Lecture by artist David Opdyke
UniversityArt Museum

David Opdyke is a rising star in contemporary
art. A former architectural model-maker, Opdyke uses his finely honed skills as a starting point for sculptures, drawings, and installations that combine obsessive detail with a sardonic view on the complexities of globalization,
consumerism, and military escalation.
Born in Niskayuna, NewYork, Opdyke lives and works in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited at Ronald Feldman Gallery, Roebling Hall, Bravin Lee Programs in New York City, the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He is the recipient of the Aldrich EmergingArtist Award from the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut,
and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture.

David Opdyke’s exhibition, Plan C, is on view at the University Art Museum February 5 through April 6, 2008.

Thursday, March 13
7:00 pm
Reading and lecture by novelist Gregory Maguire
Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Book signing immediately following at University Art Museum

Gregory Maguire is a novelist and children’s literature scholar. His adult novels include Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995) praised by John Updike in The New Yorker as “an amazing novel”, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999), Lost (2001),
and Mirror, Mirror (2003). Wicked was developed
into an award winning Broadway musical in 2003. Though best known for his revisionist retellings of classic folktales, Maguire is the author of more than a dozen books for children including What-the-Dickens:The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy (2007).
Born in Albany, New York, Maguire received his B.A. (’76) from UAlbany and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Tufts University. He was a professor and co-director at Simmons College's Center for the Study of Children's Literature from 1979-1985. Since 1986 he has been co-director and founding board member
of Children's Literature New England Inc., a nonprofit group that focuses attention on the significance of literature in the lives of children.

Co-sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute. Supported by the University at Albany Alumni Association.

Roberta Smith is the senior art critic for the New York Times. Widely acclaimed as a rigorous writer with the keen ability to express complex visual ideas, Smith’s work stands out for its integrity and independence of mind.  She began working as a professional art critic in the 1970s, writing for journals such as Arts, Artforum, and Art in America; her work has also appeared in popular publicationssuch as Newsweek and Vogue. In 1981 she became art critic for the Village Voice, andin 1986 began writing for the New York Times, where her reviews now appear weekly. She has contributed essays to exhibition catalogues on Donald Judd, Alex Katz, Elizabeth Murray, and Cy Twombly. She received art criticism grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1975 and 1980. In 2003, Smith won the College Art Association's prestigious Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Fine Arts, UAlbany. Supported by University Auxiliary Services.

Jennifer and Kevin McCoyare new media artists whose ground breaking sculptural objects, video projections,
and live events explore the powerful hold that technology and cinematic clichés play in shaping our dreams and everyday experiences.
Artistic collaborators since 1990, the McCoys have exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, Postmasters Gallery,The New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, TheWalker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, The British Film Institute Southbank in London, among other venues. They are recipients of numerous awards including a Creative Capital Foundation grant, The New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Computer Arts, The New Media Fellowship from the Colbert Foundation, and The Emerging Artist/Emergent Media Grant from the Jerome
Foundation.

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s exhibition, The Allure of the Literal, is on view at the University Art Museum February 5 through April 6, 2008.

Monday, May 5
7:00 pm
"LikeWatching Sausage Being Made:The Nitty Gritty on Artists, Galleries and Money"
Lecture by gallerist Ed Winkleman
UniversityArt Museum

Edward Winkleman is the owner/director of Winkleman Gallery in NewYork, NY. Considered one of contemporary art’s most spirited voices, he is also the author of an eponymous blog about art and politics (edwardwinkleman.blogspot.com), which receives over
30,000 hits a month, a contributing editor for the international online forum Art World Salon, and the author of various articles for online and print art
publications.
Winkleman’s ACT lecture will focus on the nuts and bolts of working with a commercial gallery and what it means conceptually to have so much of the current art world dialog revolve around the market.