Four artists and scholars remain to present as part of the Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar series in April in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s School of Art, Art History & Design.
The School of Art, Art History & Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students.
All of the events listed below are free and open to the public. The April presentations include:
• April 5: Robb Hernandez, art history. His lecture will be at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Hernandez is associate professor of English at Fordham University and the author of “Archiving an Epidemic: Art, AIDS and the Queer Chicanx Avant Garde (NYU Press, 2019).
Hernandez’s articles have appeared in American Art Journal, Aztlán, Journal of Visual Culture, Radical History Review and TSQ, among others.
In 2017, he co-curated “Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas” in conjunction with the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. He is also a recipient of a senior fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and received an Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation and Creative Capital.
• April 12: Dan Witz, interdisciplinary. His lecture will be at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Witz is a Brooklyn-based street artist and realist painter and ones of the pioneers of the street art movement.
Witz has been leaving non-permissional street art around the world since the late 1970s. On the streets of Lincoln, he will be reprising some of his recent street activism projects, addressing climate change, human trafficking, animal agriculture, the Covid tragedy, as well as a few surprises.
Witz attended the Rhode Island School of Design and came to New York in 1978 to attend Cooper Union, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1980.
In 1982, Witz received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to publish his first book, “The Birds of Manhattan” (Skinny Books, 1982). In 1992 and 2000, he received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1998, he received a fellowship from the Public Art Fund.
• April 27: Josephine Halvorson, painting. Her lecture will be at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Halvorson is professor of art and chair of graduate studies in painting at Boston University. She makes art that foregrounds firsthand experience and takes the form of painting, sculpture and printmaking.
Born in Brewster, Massachusetts, Halvorson studied at The Cooper Union, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts; Yale Norfolk; and Columbia University, where she received her Master of Fine Arts.
In 2021, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the recipient of several major international residencies and fellowships, including the U.S. Fulbright to Vienna, Austria; the Harriet Hale Woolley at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, France; and was the first American pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici in 2014-2015.
• April 27: Ryan Anderson, graphic design. Anderson will present a graphic design workshop at 7 p.m. in Woods Art Building Rm. 105. Anderson has worked in the advertising industry for more than 25 years.
His background is in creative—specifically creative direction, art direction and design. However, he's had the opportunity to lead all aspects of advertising agencies from top to bottom. He helped build those agencies into creative powerhouses, garnering the top creative awards in the industry all while creating year-over-year agency growth.
Over the years, Anderson has worked on some well-known brands including Intel, Mrs. Fields, Krispy Kreme, The Olympic Games, Verizon, Radisson, Micron, Creamies, Jackson Hole Ski Resort, Muzak, The Las Vegas Raiders, Big Brothers Big Sisters and The Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, to name a few.
During the workshop, students in the graphic design program of the School of Art, Art History & Design will show their work and get feedback from Anderson.
Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations.
For more information on the series, contact the School of Art, Art History & Design at (402) 472-5522 or e-mail schoolaahd@unl.edu.