Lauded graphic designer Michael Bierut to speak Monday at Presidential Lectureship
Janel Shoun-Smith |
 |
Graphic designer Michael Bierut, of New York City-based design firm Pentagram, will offer a free lecture at 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 11 in Ward Hall, as part of Lipscomb University’s 2013 Presidential Lectureship for Art and Art History. This event is free and open to the public. A free reception will follow the lecture.
Bierut is a leading artist of the contemporary graphic design scene. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1957, he built a career combining his love for music and the arts into the design of album covers and went on to study graphic design at the University of Cincinnati.
After landing a job at the famous design firm Massimo and Lella Vignelli in New York City in 1980, Bierut gained a serious footing in the fast-paced design industry. In 1990, Bierut moved on to Pentagram, where he is still a partner.
Bierut makes entertaining and accessible work for giants like Walt Disney, Motorola, the New York Jets, Benetton, Alfred A. Knopf, Princeton University, Yale School of Architecture, the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Library of Congress. Bierut’s projects at Pentagram have ranged from an exhibition on the psychedelic era for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to serving as design consultant to United Airlines, from development of environmental graphics for The New York Times building to the redesign of the magazine The Atlantic.
He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York City; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; and museums in Hamburg, Germany, and Montreal, Canada.
He has served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is president emeritus of AIGA National. In 2006 he received the profession's highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in recognition of his distinguished achievements and contributions to the field.
Bierut is a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art. He is co-editor of the anthology series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, and his book Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design was published in 2007. He is a co-founder of the weblog Design Observer. His commentaries about graphic design in everyday life can be heard nationally on the Public Radio International program “Studio 360.”
About the Presidential Lectureship in Art and Art History
Established in 2006, the Presidential Lectureship held by the Lipscomb Department of Art has offered Nashville some of the preeminent names in art and graphic design. Previous speakers include art critic Benjamin Buchloh, artist Nick Cave, art critic and writer James Elkins, artist Richard Tuttle, artist Janine Antoni and others.