Buzz Spector

Buzz Spector has made a career of finding the poetic intersections of the visual arts, social change movements, and historical inquiry. His main creative materials have been books, archives, and other repositories of knowledge and human experience. Co-sponsored by the Swarthmore College Peace Collection and the Department of Art, Spector's List Gallery installation at Swarthmore displayed and celebrated selections from the Peace Collection and images of peace vigils in particular. Details: closed to open, Spector's artist's book, contains a sequence of images of hands that vary in gesture: hands open in prayer; hands closed in fists; hands holding signs; and hands holding hands. An exhibition catalogue with essays by Andrea Packard and Jonathan Fineberg documents the gallery installation. A limited number of exhibition catalogues and artist's books are still available.

Buzz Spector visited Swarthmore four times to study the Peace Collection's more than 25,000 images of marches, vigils, and other public ceremonies conducted in the service of international peace and justice. Although the project was set in motion in 1999, it acquired increased significance after the events of September 11, 2001.

Winner of a Tiffany Foundation Award and three NEA fellowships, Buzz Spector received his M.F.A. from the University of Chicago. He has had numerous solo exhibitions and has been included in group exhibitions in galleries and public spaces throughout the United States and abroad. Spector is currently chair of the Department of Art at Cornell University.

Contents last updated July 06, 2006
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