Sam Fox School launches spring Public Lecture Series

Jan. 20, 2009 -- Beverly Fishman, head of the painting department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, will launch the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts' spring Public Lecture Series at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22.

Fishman is a pioneering painter whose work combines abstraction with the exploration of science, technology and medicine. Her latest work, featured in the exhibition "Beverly Fishman: New Paintings" at Bruno David Gallery Jan. 23-Feb. 28, is a vibrant barrage of information derived from and alluding to charted systems and functions of the natural universe. She utilizes materials from paint and silkscreen to polished and powder-coated metal to manipulate light and color, illuminating themes addressing abstraction, technology, medicine and the body.

Fishman received her BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1977 and her MFA from Yale University in 1980. She subsequently taught at the College of New Rochelle in New York, the Maryland Institute College of Art and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where she has served as head of the painting department since 2002.

Since 2000, Fishman has had more than a dozen one-person exhibitions at galleries in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Chicago and Los Angeles. Recent shows include "Beverly Fishman: Optical Unconscious" at the Tarble Arts Center, Eastern Illinois University; "Op Art: Then and Now" at the Columbus Museum in Ohio (2007); and "Dreaming of a More Better Future" at the Cleveland Art Institute Gallery (2005).

Fishman has been awarded many honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship Award (2005), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2003), and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant (1989). Her work has been reviewed and profiled in numerous art journals and scholarly publications and appears in public collections at the Columbus Museum of Art, the Cranbrook Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Stamford Museum and Nature Center, the United Nations Embassy in Istanbul, Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan and the MacArthur Foundation. Fishman's work is also included in the corporate collections of UBS Financial Services Inc., Compuware, DaimlerChrysler, Cantor Fitzgerald and Prudential Life Insurance, among others.

All talks in the Public Lecture Series are free and open to the public and are presented at 6:30 p.m. in Steinberg Hall Auditorium unless otherwise noted. A 30-minute reception is held prior to each lecture. For more information, call (314) 935-9300 or visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

The remaining presentations in the Public Lecture Series follow:

Friday, Jan. 30
Saarinen Exhibition Lecture
Billie Tsien and Tod Williams
Partners, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, New York
4 p.m., Steinberg Auditorium

Monday, Feb. 2
Coral Courts Lecture
Lindy Roy
Founder, ROY co., New York

Monday, Feb. 16
Distinguished Alumni Lecture
David Dowell
Principal and Director of Business Development, el dorado inc, Kansas City

Wednesday, Feb. 18
Yuko Shimizu
Artist

Monday, Feb. 23
Steinberg Auditorium Rededication Lecture
Fred Tomaselli
Artist
4 p.m., Steinberg Auditorium, Reception Following

Monday, March 2
W. J. T. Mitchell: "The Future of the Image"
Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago

Monday, March 16
Stanley Saitowitz
Senior Partner/Design Principal, Stanley Saitowitz/Natoma Architects Inc., San Francisco

Wednesday, March 18
Brett Cook: "Collaborative Aesthetics: A Dialogue about Community and Soul With Brett Cook"
Artist

Monday, March 23
James Polshek, FAIA
Senior Design Counsel, Polshek Partnership Architects, New York

Monday, March 30
Brad Cloepfil
Founder/Principal, Allied Works Architecture, Portland, Ore.

Thursday, April 2
Freund Fellow Lecture
Co-sponsored with the Saint Louis Art Museum
Claudia Schmacke
Artist, Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow
7 p.m., Saint Louis Art Museum

Friday, April 3
Presented with WUSTL's Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Andreas Huyssen: "Urban Imaginaries, the Modernist Miniature, and the Feuilleton"
Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
4 p.m. Duncker Hall, Room 101

Friday, April 3
Lorcan O'Herlihy, AIA
Founder/Principal, Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects (LOHA), Culver City, Calif.

Monday, April 6
Paul Monaghan
Partner, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, London

Monday, April 20
Marianne Burkhalter & Christian Sumi
Partners, burkhalter sumi architekten, Zurich