University of Arkansas Visiting Artist Lecture: Alex and Rebecca Webb

Courtesy of Alex Webb

Color photograph, Alex Webb, San Ysidro, California, 1979.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The University of Arkansas Department of Art is pleased to announce the Visiting Artists Lecture by Alex and Rebecca Web. The lecture will take place at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, in the Hillside Auditorium, room 206. The event is free and open to the public.

Best known for his vibrant and complex color work, Alex Webb has published 15 books, including The Suffering of Light (2011), a survey book of his color work, Memory City (with Rebecca Norris Webb) (2014), a meditation about film, time, and the city of Rochester, New York, the long-time home of Kodak, and most recently, La Calle — which features some 30 years of his street photographs from Mexico.

Webb's work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His work is found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts at Houston, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Guggenheim Museum in New York. In addition, Webb's work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Geo Magazine and other publications. In 1998, Webb received a Hasselblad Foundation Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007.

Rebecca Norris Webb has published five photography books — including The Glass Between Us and Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba (with Alex Webb). Originally a poet, Norris Webb often weaves text and photographs in her books, most notably with her third book, My Dakota—an elegy for her brother who died unexpectedly.

Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, and George Eastman Museum in Rochester. In addition to being included in museum exhibitions, her photographs have also appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Le Monde, among other publications. A second printing of My Dakota will be launched in fall 2016 at Paris Photo, along with an Italian version of the book and exhibition in Rome. Her sixth book, Slant Rhymes (with Alex), will be released in spring 2017.

The McIlroy Family Visiting Professorship in Performing and Visual Arts, established in 2005 through the philanthropy of Hayden and Mary Joe McIlroy and the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation, supports the teaching and work of a professional artist who imparts highly specialized knowledge essential to students' artistic, educational, and career enrichment and valuable to the community at large.

All visiting artist and scholar lectures are free and open to the public. The Department of Art, as well as the Joy Pratt Endowment Fund, provides additional support for the Visiting Artist/Scholar Series.