Date: Jan 24, 2008

Spring 2008 Semester Features Visiting Artist Peter Plagens

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY … The Comparative Arts and Culture Program has announced that Peter Plagens will serve as a visiting artist this spring 2008 semester, teaching a core seminar – "The Artist's Practice."

Mr. Plagens, a painter who's shown with the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York since 1974, was also the staff art critic for Newsweek (1989-2003), where he is now contributing editor. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Arts Journalism Program. His paintings were the subject of a traveling retrospective that opened at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 2004.

Mr. Plagens is the author of two books of art criticism – Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast, 1945-70 and Moonlight Blues: An Artist's Art Criticism – as well as a novel, Time for Robo. He is a frequent contributor to ArtNews and Art in America, and contributes to The Nation and Bookforum as well. In 2005 he was the Mellon Distinguished Visiting Professor at Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT.

The Master of Arts in Comparative Arts and Culture is an interdisciplinary program offered by the Department of Fine Arts, Art History and Humanities and the Department of Comparative Literature and Languages. Good candidates for this program are students interested in an advanced degree in the liberal arts within a comparative context in the humanities and students who are motivated to construct individualized programs of study. High school and junior high school teachers with a B.S. in education often find the program perfect for earning their professional certification in the state of New York.