Renowned Art Scholar and Curator Offers Cal Anderson Lecture at Evergreen

Olympia, (Wash), The week after Thanksgiving will see the revival of a tradition at The Evergreen State College, the Cal Anderson Memorial Lecture Series.

The series, which has brought such notable authors as Kenji Yoshino and Blanche Cook and filmmaker Wendy Jo Carlton to Olympia, honors Washington State's first openly gay state legislator.
 
Jonathan Katz, Ph.D., chair of the Art Department and director of Visual Studies Doctoral Program  at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), prominent LGTBQ activist and co-curator of the exhibit currently at the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM), Art AIDS America will spend November 30 and December 1 in the South Puget Sound discussing art, AIDS,  LGTBQ issues and how they intersect.

On November 30, Katz will offer a talk to Evergreen students, faculty and the general public entitled "How AIDS Changed American Art."  The lecture will be held on the Olympia campus, in the Communications Building Recital Hall at 5:30 pm. In this lecture, Katz argues that AIDS has been the great, albeit repressed, motor behind the development of  American art over the last several decades. Instead of seeing AIDS as a tragic tangent in the formation of our common culture, Katz argues that strategies born of AIDS continue to guide American art even up to the present day.
 
The following morning Katz will lead students and faculty from Evergreen’s Tacoma Program and Olympia programs on a curated tour of the TAM exhibit, underscoring the argument in front of defining works of art.

Cal Anderson served from 1987 to 1995 in the Washington state legislature, first as a state representative and later as a state senator. He remained a public servant until his death in 1995 from AIDS.  A Vietnam-era veteran, Anderson was awarded two Bronze Stars and four U.S. Army Commendation Medals.
 
The Cal Anderson Memorial Lecture Series is a forum organized by Evergreen to capture the spirit of public policy reasoning and ideas that marked Cal Anderson's career. Known in his later life for AIDS and equal-rights legislation, Anderson also worked tirelessly for campaign finance and regulatory reform, veterans' issues, environmental protection and open access to government.
Art AIDS America is organized by Tacoma Art Museum in partnership with The Bronx Museum of the Arts with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, and Gilead Sciences, Inc. The exhibit will run until January 10, 2016.