Sept. 26, 2006 -- The University of Virginia Art Museum announces this year’s Gladys S. Blizzard Lecture. Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The New Yorker, will present his lecture, “Tales of Art Love,” on Friday Oct. 6, at 5 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 158. The lecture is free and open to the public.  A reception follows in the museum.

In describing his lecture, Schjeldahl noted that “Tales of Art Love” will focus on “art as sport, drug, substitute religion, science of mind, vicarious autobiography, second-hand sex, imaginary politics, escape from reality, higher reality and best revenge.”

Peter Schjeldahl was born in Fargo, N.D. in 1942. After settling in New York in 1965, he began his career in art criticism, working for ArtNews. Schjeldahl has published six books of poetry in addition to working as a regular art critic for The Sunday New York Times (1969-1975), The Village Voice (1966, 1980-1982, 1990-1998), and 7 Days (1988-1990). He taught a seminar for studio seniors in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University for four years.
Schjeldahl has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Frank Jewett Mather Award for excellence in art criticism from the College Art Association.

“Tales of Art Love” is sponsored in part by the Gladys S. Blizzard Fund; Carl H. and Martha S. Lindner Center for Art History, McIntire Department of Art; Brown College; and the Special Lectures Committee, University of Virginia.

he Blizzard lecture is held in conjunction with the special exhibit, “Complicit! Contemporary American Art and Mass Culture,” and is part of a two-day symposium. Schjeldahl will also take part in the panel discussion on Oct. 7 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Gravity Lounge in downtown Charlottesville.

For more information call (434) 243-8854 or visit www.virginia.edu/artmuseum.