Art Council Lecture Series

In addition to the longer engagements sponsored as the Distinguished Scholar Lectureship, the UCLA Art Council Lecture Series in Art History brings major art historians, curators, critics, and artists to the Department of Art History for individual lectures or events.

The UCLA Art Council’s history extends back to the 1950s and 1960s, when—as a former key organization in the artworld of Los Angeles—it was convened as a support and patronage group for the arts on our campus by the painter, curator, and museum director Frederick S. Wight. The Art Council’s activity broadly supported the visual arts at UCLA, sponsoring major museum exhibitions a generation prior to the formation of the current Los Angeles museum landscape, and helping to establish campus collections such as the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden. The Art Council championed a wide panorama of campus art institutions then in formation: UCLA exhibition venues past and present (the Wight Art Gallery and the Museum of Cultural History, now constellated on campus as the Hammer and the Fowler Museums), the Departments of Art, Art History, and Design, and the Arts Library. It also funded many student scholarships, endowed a professorial chair, and was involved in presenting public lectures. The UCLA Art Council Lecture Series in Art History continues this legacy.

2025-26
TBA

2024-25
Mark Godfrey