Claremont, Calif. (March 7, 2014) — Pitzer College selected renowned art historian and writer Maria Elena Buszek as the 2014 Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artist and Scholar. Buszek’s lecture, “Andrea Bowers: Feminism, Everyday Life and ‘Radical Patience’,” is being held in conjunction with the exhibition of Andrea Bowers’ #sweetjane, co-organized by Pitzer College and Pomona College, and currently on display at Pitzer College’s Nichols Gallery until March 28 and at the Pomona College Museum of Art until April 13. Buszek’s talk will be held on March 12 at 4:15 p.m. in Pitzer’s George C.S. Benson Auditorium. The lecture and exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Maria Elena Buszek
Buszek will explore Bowers’ work in the context of the artist’s feminist influences and interest in popular culture. In #sweetjane, Bowers uses drawings, text messages and video to examine a notorious high school rape case in Steubenville, Ohio. A recent Los Angeles Times review said Bowers’ art merges “piercing insight about current events with social activism.”
Maria Elena Buszek is a scholar, critic, curator and associate professor of art history at the University of Colorado, Denver, where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary art. Buszek’s recent publications include Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture and Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, for which she served as editor and essayist and won the LoPresti Prize for Best Essay Collection in 2011-12. She wrote essays for the anthology Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower and the exhibition catalogue In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States. She has also written articles and criticism in journals such as Art in America, Photography Quarterly and TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies.
This lecture is made possible by the Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artists and Scholars Endowed Fund at Pitzer College. Established in 2007, the fund helps bring critically acclaimed artists and scholars to campus. These visiting artists and scholars often conduct seminars, hands-on workshops, public talks and one-on-one conversations with students, faculty and The Claremont Colleges community. Previous Pepper Scholars include award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker Avon Kirkland and 2013 MacArthur “genius” award and 2014 BET Visual Award winner Carrie Mae Weems.
The fund is named after Trustee Emeritus Murray Pepper and Vicki Reynolds Pepper, long-term supporters of the College and the grandparents of David Pepper ’17 and Morgan Pepper ’12.
