UNLV's Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery will host Joe Brainard: A Retrospective Jan. 22 through Feb. 28. The exhibit, organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, opens at 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 22 with a gallery talk hosted by UNLV art professor and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Dave Hickey. It continues that evening with a reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. that is free and open to the public.
In addition, there will be a poetry reading, "Joe Brainard Remembered: Poetry Readings with Dayvid Figler and Friends," that will be held 7-9 p.m. in the gallery on Friday, Feb. 1. This event also is free and open to the public.
Brainard was born in Arkansas in 1942, grew up in Oklahoma, and moved to New York, just out of high school in 1960. From 1965 to 1979 he produced thousands of paintings, assemblages, collages, book covers and illustrations and one-of-a-kind books. He had several one-person exhibitions in galleries in New York and elsewhere, and appeared in 45 group shows between 1965 and 1979. By 1980, he ceased making art and spent the majority of his time reading. He died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1994.
Virtually forgotten by the art world establishment and unheard of by a younger generation, Brainard is beginning to enjoy a tentative revival. He is currently represented in the exhibition In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O'Hara and American Art at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and was a subject of a retrospective at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1997.
The exhibit is organized by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum, with funding from an anonymous donor and the Judith Rothschild Foundation. Funding for the UNLV venue has been provided by the Robert M. McNamara Foundation with additional funding from the Nevada Arts Council, a state agency and the National Endowment for The Arts, a federal agency.
The Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery is located on the UNLV campus and is open Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free.
