October 25, 2004
Artist Robert Irwin to appear at SIUC Nov. 1
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Installation artist Robert Irwin will give a free presentation on his work and his creative philosophies at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 1, in the Parkinson Building's Browne Auditorium at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Irwin is a guest of the Visiting Artists Program sponsored by the School of Art and Design, part of the College of Liberal Arts. His talk is free and open to the public.
The artist's most widely known public project is probably the expansive garden he designed for the Getty Center in Los Angeles, which opened in 1997.
Born in Long Beach, Calif., in 1928, he studied art in Los Angeles.
"He has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in North America and abroad. Irwin received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984. In 1993, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, initiated a major retrospective of his work, which subsequently traveled to Paris, Madrid and Cologne," according to the Art Cyclopedia Web site found at the address below:
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/irwin_robert.html.
"The act of art is a tool for extended consciousness," Irwin has said.
Providing cultural experiences to the greater community is among the goals of Southern at 150: Building Excellence Through Commitment, the blueprint for the development of the University by the time it celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2019.