March 19, 2003, 11:30 a.m.
Pattee Library, Foster Auditorium
"Positioning the Author" will cover the history of Mr.
Spector's work with books as subject and object, libraries as historical
metaphors, and authorship as bureaucratic posing.
Buzz Spector is an artist and critical writer
whose artwork has been shown in such museums and galleries as the Art
Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary
Art, Chicago; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Mattress
Factory, Pittsburgh, PA. His work makes frequent use of the book, both
as subject and object, and is concerned with relationships among public
history, individual memory, and perception. Spector has issued a number
of artists' books and editions since the mid-1970s, including, most
recently Details: closed to open, an artists’ book
of photographic details from images in the Swarthmore College Peace
Collection, an archive of historical and contemporary information related
to peace and social justice, published in 2001 by the artist and Swarthmore
College. Among his previous publications is Beautiful Scenes:
Selections from the Cranbrook Archives (Cranbrook Art Museum,
Bloomfield Hills, MI, 1998).
Spector was a co-founder of WhiteWalls, a magazine of
writings by artists, in Chicago in 1978, and served as the publication's
editor until 1987. Since then he has written extensively on topics in
contemporary art and culture, and has contributed reviews and essays
to a number of publications, including American Craft,
Artforum, Art Issues, Dialogue,
Exposure, New Art Examiner, and Visions.
He is the author of The Book Maker's Desire, critical
essays on topics in contemporary art and artists' books (Umbrella Editions,
1995), and numerous exhibition catalogue essays, including Ann
Hamilton: Sao Paulo — Seattle (University of Washington
Press, 1992), and Dieter Roth (University of Iowa Museum
of Art, 1999).
Spector earned his B.A. in Art from Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale in 1972, and his M.F.A. with the Committee on Art and Design
at the University of Chicago in 1978. In 1991 he was awarded a Louis
Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, and in 1982, 1985, and 1991 he
received National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Awards. He is professor
and chair of the Department of Art at Cornell University.
Related links:
Samek Art Gallery—
Artist, Object, Installation, Meaning: Buzz Spector
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