Brooklyn, New York-based street artist and realist painter Dan Witz will present the next Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture at 5:30 p.m. April 12 in Richards Hall room 15.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
The School of Art, Art History & Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students.
Witz has been leaving non-permissional street art around the world since the late 1970s. On the streets of Lincoln, he will be reprising some of his recent street activism projects, addressing climate change, human trafficking, animal agriculture, the Covid tragedy, as well as a few surprises.
Witz attended the Rhode Island School of Design and came to New York in 1978 to attend Cooper Union, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1980.
In 1982, Witz received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to publish his first book, “The Birds of Manhattan” (Skinny Books, 1982). In 1992 and 2000, he received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1998, he received a fellowship from the Public Art Fund.
His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide. He has had solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, London, Paris, Rome, Milan and Berlin. He has also been featured in many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Vice, and he has been on the cover of Juxtapoz Magazine.
In 2010, Gingko Press released “In Plain View, 30 Years of Artworks, Illegal and Otherwise,” a monograph documenting Witz’s career and works created in the studio and on the street.
His work as an activist has included projects with Amnesty International on the street art campaign “Wailing Walls;” and with PETA U.K. on the street art campaign “Empty the Cages,” highlighting the brutality of industrial agriculture; and with PETA U.S.A. on the street art campaign “Actual Victims,” protesting NIH psychological experiments on baby moneys.
The remaining lectures in the series are:
• April 27: Josephine Halvorson, painting. Halvorson is professor of art and chair of graduate studies in painting at Boston University. She makes art that foregrounds firsthand experience and takes the form of painting, sculpture and printmaking.
• April 27: Ryan Anderson, graphic design. Anderson has worked in the advertising industry for more than 25 years. He will present a workshop at 7 p.m. in 105 Woods Art Building instead of a lecture.
Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations.
For more information on the series, contact the School of Art, Art History & Design at (402) 472-5522 or e-mail schoolaahd@unl.edu.
