Award-winning author Lawrence Weschler, a “passionate advocate of wonder” and writer of creative nonfiction works, will deliver a pair of presentations at Carleton College’s Weitz Center for Creativity on Monday, Oct. 17. Weschler’s appearance is in conjunction with the exhibit, “Seeing is Knowing: The Universe,” currently on display in the Perlman Teaching Museum at the Weitz Center for Creativity. Both events, as well as admission to the exhibit, are free and open to the public.
Weschler’s first presentation at 12 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 17 in Room 236 of the Weitz Center for Creativity, is titled “Art and Science as Parallel and Divergent Ways of Knowing.” Weschler will explore ways in which art and science can converge to teach us about our world, and makes the argument that art and science have not always been separated as firmly as they are today. Weschler will discuss the work of such artists as David Hockney and Robert Irwin, both of whom have been featured in his books.
Weschler’s evening presentation, a Christopher U. Light Lecture in the Arts, will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Boliou Hall Room 161. This lecture, titled “The Uncanny Valley: The Digital Animation of the Face,” will look at animators’ quest to perfectly simulate the human face. Weschler will explore why a believable human face is so difficult to achieve—and why it may be out of the reach of even the most advanced technology.
Lawrence Weschler was a staff writer at The New Yorker for over twenty years; his works have won him two George Polk Awards and a Lannan Literary Award. His book Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (Pantheon, 1995), described by one reviewer as “magical realist nonfiction,” was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. His collection of ruminations about surprising visual coincidences, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences (McSweeney’s, 2007) was awarded the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His most recent book, True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney (University of California Press, 2009), describes an ongoing dialogue with famed English painter David Hockney; the book was praised by Publishers Weekly as containing “an overwhelming wealth of knowledge and a lively narrative style.”
A graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, Weschler is the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University.
These events are sponsored by the Carleton College Departments of Art & Art History and Cinema & Media Studies, with additional support from Viz (Visualizing the Liberal Arts) thanks to a grant received from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information about these events, including disability accommodations, contact the Carleton College Office of College Relations at (507) 222-4308. The Weitz Center for Creativity is located 620 North Third Street in Northfield; Boliou Hall is accessible via Highway 19 on the Carleton campus.
