Teju Cole, Lori Nix Photography Exhibitions Held Over at UK Art Museum Through Dec. 15
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 8, 2017) — Recent lectures by Robert C. May Photographers Teju Cole and Lori Nix were so well attended that the University of Kentucky Art Museum has arranged to extend their free public exhibitions through 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15.
Teju Cole is an acclaimed photographer, writer and art historian whose relentless travels provide opportunities for precise observation and reflection on human culture — what can be seen and described, and what can be felt. In his exhibition “Blind Spot” and the related book, he links images of public and private spaces with insightful prose in a glancing, poetic manner.
Cole is the photography critic of The New York Times Magazine and an award-winning novelist (“Open City”) and essay writer (“Known and Strange Things”). These works have earned a variety of honors including the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York City Book Award for Fiction, the Focus Award from the Griffin Museum of Photography, and the Windham Campbell Prize for fiction from Yale University. Raised in Nigeria, Cole currently resides in Brooklyn.
The first artist in the 2017-18 May Photography Lecture Series, Lori Nix’s exhibition, "The City," presents spaces of urban ruin — a wrecked anatomy classroom, a once grand library and a Chinese takeout restaurant, to name a few. These are not documents of real world decay but rather images made with painstakingly constructed dioramas that she builds with her partner, Kathleen Gerber. Nix’s work has been exhibited throughout the country and is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The George Eastman Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.
The May Lecture Series explores photography's roots in the 19th century and its reinvention in the digital world. The lecture series is made possible through the Robert C. May Photography Endowment, a museum fund established in 1994 for the support of acquisitions and programs relating to photography.
The mission of the UK Art Museum, part of the UK College of Fine Arts, is to promote the understanding and appreciation of art to enhance the quality of life for people of Kentucky through collecting, exhibiting, preserving and interpreting outstanding works of visual art from all cultures. Home to a collection of more than 4,800 objects including American and European paintings, drawings, photographs, prints and sculpture, the museum presents both special exhibitions and shows of work from its permanent collection.