Poet, critic, teacher and curator BILL Berkson comes to the Albright-Knox for a special two-part event. First, Berkson will present “DeKooning-esque,” an inclusive quick-time exploration of 1960s art history exploring the brushstroke: its history, crucial role in the development of Pop and Minimalist styles, and significance in both the works of Williem deKooning and his contemporaries and followers. Centered on the Albright-Knox’s own deKooning, Gotham News, this Gusto at the Gallery talk will examine various artists represented in the Gallery’s Permanent Collection.

Be sure to join us on Saturday, March 20, 2010 at 12:30pm for part two of Berkson’s visit, a special stroll into the Gallery space for an intimate “walk and talk” conversation amidst modern masterpieces.

Born in New York in 1939, Bill Berkson is a poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties. Director of Letters and Science at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1993 to 1998, he taught art history, critical writing and poetry and directed the public lectures program there 1984-2008. He studied at Trinity School, The Lawrenceville School, Brown University, Columbia, the New School for Social Research and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

He is the author of eighteen books and pamphlets of poetry -- including, recently, Gloria, a portfolio of poems with etchings by Alex Katz (Arion Press, 2005), Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently (The Owl Press, 2007), Goods and Services (Blue Press, 2008), and most recently, Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems (Coffee HousePress, 2009). His poems have also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. Other recent books are What’s Your Idea of a Good Time: Letters & Interviews 1977-1985 with Bernadette Mayer (Tuumba Press, 2006; BILL with drawings by Colter Jacobsen (Gallery 16 Editions, 2008); and Ted Berrigan with George Schneeman (Cuneiform Press, 2009).     

During the 1960s he was an editorial associate at Art News, a regular contributor to Arts, guest editor at the Museum of Modern Art, an associate producer of a program on art for public television, and taught literature and writing workshops at the New School and Yale University.

After moving to Northern California in 1970, he began editing and publishing a series of poetry books and magazines under the Big Sky imprint. He was awarded a creative writing fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1980 and has also received awards and fellowships from Yaddo, Artspace, the Poets Foundation, The Fund for Poetry, and Briarcombe Foundation. Before coming to the Art Institute, he taught regularly in the California Poets in the Schools program. 

In the mid-1980s he resumed writing art criticism on a regular basis, contributing monthly reviews and articles to Artforum from 1985 to 1991; he became a corresponding editor for Art in America in 1988 and also writes frequently for such magazines as Aperture, Modern Painters, Art on Paper, and others.

As a curator he has organized or co-curated such exhibitions as Ronald Bladen: Early and Late (SFMoMA), Albert York (Mills College), Why Painting I & II (Susan Cummins Gallery), Homage to George Herriman (Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery), and Facing Eden: 100 years of Northern California Landscape Art (M.H. de Young Museum).

He was Distinguished Paul Mellon Lecturer for 2006 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and was awarded the 2008 Goldie for Literature from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. A collection of his criticism, The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings, appeared from Qua Books in 2004, and Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 from Cuneiform Press. in 2007. A new collection of his writings and interviews on art and poetry will follow soon.

Funded by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.