Bill Berkson to Visit Tang for 2 Public Events

Award-winning poet and critic Bill Berkson will be at Skidmore's Tang Museum for two free public events Thursday and Friday, Oct. 26 and 27.

Berkson will read his own poetry at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26, and participate in a dialogue with Terence Diggory of the English Department faculty. At noon Friday, Oct. 27, Berkson will switch into critic mode to give a gallery talk on the Tang exhibition Twice Drawn.

A professor of liberal arts at the San Francisco Art Institute, Berkson has been active in the art and literary worlds since the late 1950s and is the author of 16 books and pamphlets of poetry, including Saturday Night: Poems 1960-61, Shining Leaves, Recent Visitors, Blue is the Hero, Lush Life, and Fugue State.

In addition to his poetry, Berkson is well-known for his reviews and articles in Artforum, Art in America, American Craft, Art on Paper, Modern Painters, Art Journal, Shift, Artspace, and others. He is a corresponding editor for Art in America and a member of the editorial board of Modern Painters. He has written extensively on such artists as Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Alex Katz, Jasper Johns, and Yvonne Jacquette. A selection of his criticism, The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings, was published in 2003.

Berkson has received numerous honors including awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, Artspace, the Poets Foundation, the Fund for Poetry, and the Briarcombe Foundation. He has been appointed Distinguished Mellon Lecturer for 2006 at Skowhegan School of Art.

Berkson's visit is sponsored by the Tang Museum, the Skidmore English Department, and Folio, the student art and literature journal. For more information, please call 518-580-8080.