Wexner Center for the Arts (Ohio State University)

Here’s your chance to chat with other film fans and director Peter Bogdanovich at a member-only reception before he introduces his 1972 screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? at 7 PM. Tickets to Bogdanovich's presentation are on sale to Wexner Center members from December 1 to 13, 2009 to January 3, 2010.

Hear Percival Everett read from and talk about his writing, including his most recent novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier.

Kaira Sturdivant Rouda, president of Real Living and a founding donor of the Wexner Center, leads a lively discussion based on her new book, Real You Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs. She'll be joined by five other notable women from the central Ohio business community for this event, ... (more)which begins with a reception and concludes with a book signing.

Kaira Sturdivant Rouda, president of Real Living and a founding donor of the Wexner Center, leads a lively discussion based on her new book, Real You Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs. She'll be joined by four other notable women from the central Ohio business community for this event, ... (more)which begins with a reception and concludes with a book signing.

Tonight, she will read from Tales of Graceful Aging from the Planet Denial, her humorous and very personal reflection on the realities of aging. Famed cartoonist Jules Feiffer calls the book, “infectious, smart, wacky, laugh-out-loud funny and gorgeously written.” A book signing at the Wexner Center ... (more)Store follows.

Hear critic and Warhol biographer Wayne Koestenbaum converse with artist Francesco Vezzoli, whose fascination with celebrity rivals Warhol’s own, in the keynote presentation for our two-day Andy Warhol symposium.

Come back on Saturday for a dynamic daylong discussion of Warhol, his work, and his ... (more)continuing influence among curators, critics, and members of Warhol’s circle. Click here for details.

$8 admission includes one free gallery admission for November 14 or 15.

Join us for a lively conversation among musician Dean Wareham (of Galaxie 500 and Luna fame, who is performing songs composed for a selection of Warhol’s Screen Tests later tonight with partner Britta Phillips); Mark Richardson, critic and managing editor of Pitchfork, the indie music bible; and Barry ... (more)Shank, professor of comparative studies at Ohio State.

Stay after the discussion for a cash bar reception in the cafe and book signing at the entrance to the store. Dean Wareham signs copies of his new book, Black Postcards; Mark Richardson signs the just-released Pitchfork 500.

Then head to Wareham and Phillips's concert of 13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests.

Best-selling author Sue Miller reads from and talks about her work, which includes the novels While I Was Gone, The Good Mother, and most recently, The Senator’s Wife. Miller, who lives in Cambridge, has taught fiction at Amherst, Bennington, Tufts, and MIT, among other schools. Her publications also ... (more)include the short story collection Inventing the Abbotts, the memoir Story of My Father, and five additional novels. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the Carl Sandburg Prize from the Chicago Public Library and been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and for The Orange Prize. A committed advocate for writers’ engagement with society at large, she has worked actively with PEN New England.

John Hemingway's critically acclaimed memoir Strange Tribe (2007) examines the complex relationship between his father, Dr. Gregory Hemingway, and his grandfather, Nobel Laureate Ernest Hemingway. The son of a bipolar father and schizophrenic mother, he spent his early years being shuffled from one home ... (more)to another. After college, he moved to Italy as a way of distancing himself from his troubled family background. One of the unresolved questions for him was how his father, a cross-dresser and transsexual, might fit with the public image of his grandfather as an icon of male masculinity. He discovered that both men, besides being bipolar, were also fascinated by androgyny. As he recounts, the macho myth surrounding his grandfather was only half the story. John Hemingway was born in Miami in 1960. The memoir probes his difficult childhood, his studies, and his move to Italy. He studied history and Italian at UCLA, and after graduating, moved to Milan, Italy, in 1983, where he pursued a career in writing and translating. His articles have appeared in several Italian newspapers such as l'Unità and Libero. He is currently working on a libretto for an opera based on his childhood and the father/son relationship. After leaving Italy and spending a year in Spain, Hemingway now lives in Montreal, Canada, with his wife and two children. Cosponsored by Ohio State's Department of English and Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities.

Lucille Clifton is one of the most beloved and respected figures in American poetry today, widely acclaimed for her powerful explorations of race, womanhood, spirituality, and mortality. She has published 12 collections of her poetry, one autobiographical prose work and 19 children's books, with more ... (more)on the way. She received the National Book Award for Poetry for her book, Blessing the Boats (BOA 2000). Her most recent book of poems is Mercy (BOA 2005); other titles include Ordinary Woman, Quilting, and The Book of Light. Her work has been anthologized in close to 200 anthologies of poetry. Ms. Clifton has received many fellowships and awards for her poetry collections and children's books, including the 2007 Ruth Lilly Prize, Shelley Memorial Prize, a Charity Randall Citation, an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, selection as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, a Lannan Achievement Award in Poetry and a Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Writer's Award. Ms. Clifton served as distinguished Professor of Humanities and holder of the Hilda C. Landers Endowed chair in the Liberal Arts at St. Mary's College of Maryland until her retirement in the fall of 2005. She continues to serve St. Mary's as Professor emeritus and Friend to the College. She served as Poet Laureate of the State of Maryland from 1975-1985. Ms. Clifton serves on the board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lucille Clifton will read from her work on Tuesday, April 21 at 7: 00 p.m. in the Wexner Film/Video Theatre. The reading is free and open to the public.

The Ohio State University's Office of Minority Affairs and the Greater Columbus Arts Council present this reading and lecture with award-winning author Amy Tan as part of The President and Provost's 2008-09 Diversity Lecture & Cultural Arts Series and The Big Read Columbus. Tan reads from her classic ... (more)novel The Joy Luck Club--the focus of the first 2009 Big Read program in Columbus--and discusses her work as part of a visit that marks the culmination of a month of citywide events that have encouraged the entire community to read and discuss the same book. Born in America to immigrant parents from China, Tan is currently writing a new novel. In addition to The Joy Luck Club, her novels include The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, and Saving Fish from Drowning. She served as coproducer and coscreenwriter for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club. This event is free but ticketed. Call the Wexner Center ticket office (614) 292-3535 to reserve your ticket. Cosponsored by Ohio State University's Office of Minority Affairs, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Wexner Center. Keep reading for more about The Big Read in Columbus and nationally.

The Cartoonist is a portrait of Columbus-based cartoonist and Bone-creator Jeff Smith and his impact on the field during the past 20 years. The Wexner Center is pleased and proud to host the film's world premiere, introduced by both Smith and director Ken Mills. The film surveys Smith's career during ... (more)the run of Bone and also captures the key moment when he shifted focus from completing his popular epic to beginning new projects, including Rasl. Shot during the run of Smith's Wexner Center exhibition Bone and Beyond in 2008, the film is filled with interviews with fellow cartoonists including Harvey Pekar, Terry Moore, Paul Pope, and Scott McCloud. Director Ken Mills is cofounder of Columbus-based Mills James Productions. (76 mins., video) Cosponsored by Ohio State's Cartoon Library and Museum.

Cartoon and animation historian Jerry Beck returns to the Wexner Center to introduce three cartoon classics in conjunction with an exhibition and other programs related to a major recent acquisition by the Cartoon Library and Museum (formerly the Cartoon Research Library). Author of The 50 Greatest Cartoons, ... (more)The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, and Not Just Cartoons: Nicktoons!, Beck is also the coeditor of cartoonbrew.com and the organizer of the popular Worst Cartoons Ever program. You can be sure he'll have plenty to say about 101 Dalmatians, the last Disney feature founder Walt lived to see (79 mins., 35mm); The Brave Little Tailor, which puts Mickey and Minnie in a Grimm Brothers' fairy-tale (8 mins., 35mm). Beck also introduces the Paramount cartoon Leprechaun's Gold. (10 mins., 35mm) Beck signs copies of his publications in the Wexner Center Store from 6 to 7 PM.

Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most beloved and best-selling books of all time. Rereading it as an adult, award-winning author Francine Prose (Goldengrove, Reading Like a Writer) was inspired to explore the life of Anne Frank, the lasting impact of the book, and the ... (more)backstory of how the deceptively simple volume came to be a world-wide phenomenon. "How astonishing that a teenager could have written so intelligently and so movingly about a subject that continues to overwhelm the adult imagination," Prose writes in Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife. Prose's thoughtful book (released on September 29 by HarperCollins), which she reads from tonight, is sure to give readers new insight into a literary treasure and its enduring legacy. Prose signs books after the program.

Noah Isenberg, who teaches film and literary studies at the New School in New York, talks about the renewed interest in, and growing reputation of, filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer as a director of classic film noir (from Detour to Ruthless and beyond). His talk explores how Ulmer's career as a ... (more)B director, once relegated to the dustbin of film history, has recently been resuscitated by the posthumous success of his noir productions and the efforts to preserve them.

8:00AM - 4:30PM Interested in art collecting or the protection of cultural artifacts? This symposium explores the history and extent of thefts of fine art and library materials and offers an exciting opportunity to hear from curators as well as law enforcement officers working in the arts. This Wexner ... (more)Center co-sponsored seminar will bring current industry experts to Columbus and will intrigue collectors or others interested in safeguarding cultural property. The day’s events include a roundtable discussion featuring art theft experts, a screening of the documentary The Rape of Europa (Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham, 2007) that examines the Nazi's systematic theft of artworks during WWII, book signings with featured speakers Noah Charney and Travis McDade, and much more. Cosponsored by The Ohio State University Libaries, the OSU Department of Public Safety, and the Wexner Center.

8:00AM - 4:30PM Interested in art collecting or the protection of cultural artifacts? This symposium explores the history and extent of thefts of fine art and library materials and offers an exciting opportunity to hear from curators as well as law enforcement officers working in the arts. This Wexner ... (more)Center co-sponsored seminar will bring current industry experts to Columbus and will intrigue collectors or others interested in safeguarding cultural property. The day’s events include a roundtable discussion featuring art theft experts, a screening of the documentary The Rape of Europa (Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham, 2007) that examines the Nazi's systematic theft of artworks during WWII, book signings with featured speakers Noah Charney and Travis McDade, and much more. Cosponsored by The Ohio State University Libaries, the OSU Department of Public Safety, and the Wexner Center.