Peter Selz, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, and West Coast editor of Art in America, has written and organized exhibitions on virtually the entire spectrum of the arts of this century. From 1958 to 1965 he was Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was the founding Director of the University Art Museum in Berkeley from 1965 to 1973 and was Project Director for Christo’s Running Fence from 1974 to 1976. Author of studies on German Expressionist painting, political cartoons, Art Nouveau, American painting between the World Wars, Funk, and kinetic sculpture, he has also written monographs on Ferdinand Hodler, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Alberto Giacometti, Mark Rothko, Jean Dubuffet, and Sam Francis. He has contributed to numerous American and European journals and magazines and was coeditor (with Herschel B. Chipp and Joshua Taylor) of Theories of Modern Art.

In this lecture, Selz focuses on the 1937 Nazi-organized Entartete Kunst ("Degenerate Art") exhibition, the most virulent campaign ever organized against modern art. He will discuss the 1991 recreation of that exhibition by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Additionally, Selz will explore contemporary issues of censorship and political intervention in the art world.