Writer Lawrence Weschler Appears at USU in Visiting Artist Program

Writer Lawrence Weschler will be on the Utah State University campus Jan. 29-30 as part of the art department’s Visiting Artist Program.

For more than 20 years until his recent retirement, Weschler was a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies.

 

At USU he will present a public lecture, “Bring Your Own Convergence,” Monday, Jan. 29, at 7 p.m. in the Eccles Conference Center, room 216.

 

Weschler’s presentation grows from his recent book Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences and a contest that was spawned by the book. Details about the contest are available on the Web. Audience members are invited to bring their own “convergences” and Weschler will respond. A question and discussion session follows the lecture.

In addition to the evening public lecture, Weschler will meet with USU students Tuesday, Jan. 30, for a seminar based on readings from his book Vermeer in Bosnia.

All events are free and open to the public.

 

Weschler is a 1974 graduate of Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award (for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992) and was also a recipient of Lannan Literary Award (1998).

 

His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).

 

His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998); Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and now, Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006).

Weschler has taught at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, NYU and Sarah Lawrence.

 

He is director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991. From that base he plans to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, “Omnivore.” He concurrently holds the position of artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Other guests filling out the schedule for USU’s Visiting Artist Program include ceramic artist Richard Notkin (Feb. 13-16), painter, photographer, installation artist Scott Grieger (March 19) and sculptor David Secrest (March 26-29). Grieger’s visit is sponsored by the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. These guests have been selected for their national and international reputations, their varied backgrounds and the ways in which their art reflects diversity with respect to the media used.

 

The Visiting Artist Program organizes the visits by nationally known artists, art critics/writers and art historians. Lectures, workshops, group discussions and possible exhibitions by the artists are free and open to the public.

 

The Visiting Artist Program is funded by a grant from the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Utah Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Utah Arts Council, with funding from the State of Utah, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

For more information about the Visiting Artist Program at USU, contact program director Marilyn Krannich at (435) 797-7373.