Renowned Critic Speaks at Spring Reception

AUBURN, Al. — Esteemed art critic Jed Perl will speak at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art’s Spring Reception on Thursday, March 26, 2009. Perl will give his lecture, “Authority and Freedom: Reflections on Artistic Experience,” at 6 p.m. with the reception following from 7-9 p.m.

Perl has served as art critic for The New Republic since 1994. Educated in art history and painting at Columbia College and Brooklyn College, Perl has since written extensively on art and the art scene for periodicals such as The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New Criterion, Partisan Review, Salmagundi, The New York Times Book Review and Vogue. Perl has also made appearances on Charlie Rose, CNN and National Public Radio.

The poet John Ashbery observed that Perl covers “the art world with tremendous empathy and unsparing accuracy. His ability to recognize the traditional forms of art behind their continual transmutation has made his an almost solitary, essential voice.” Fellow critic Robert Hughes describes Perl’s writing as “personal but authoritative, witty, written straight-on without a syllable of the vile jargon of Academe.”

Perl’s book New Art City, a study of art and culture at mid-twentieth-century, was a New York Times Notable Book and Atlantic Monthly Best Book of the Year in 2005. Author Jonathan Safran Foer characterized Perl’s most recent book, Antoine's Alphabet: Watteau and His World, as “a history and a fairy tale, a work of criticism, and, itself, a work of art.”

The Spring Reception celebrates the 2009 Auburn University Department of Art Faculty Exhibition, which will be on display March 14- May 30, 2009.

For more information contact Colleen Bourdeau at cbourdeau@auburn.edu or (334) 844-7075