Arts & Humanities Society & Culture

Award-winning art critic Paddy Johnson to speak at UGA

Johnson
Paddy Johnson

Athens, Ga. – Paddy Johnson, the founding editor of the blog Art Fag City, will speak Oct. 30 at 5:30 p.m. in room S151 of the University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art. The talk is supported by a grant from the Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

“I’m really looking forward to visiting the studios at the Lamar Dodd School of Art and getting acquainted with the art scene,” Johnson said. “The art-making communities at each art school and city I visit are very different so it’s always really exciting to me to learn what factors inform the artwork being made.

“I’ll be discussing the seven years I’ve spent managing the blog, where I’ve been, and where I see the blog heading. It’s a pretty exciting time for the blog right now, so I’m glad to have the opportunity to discuss what we’re doing with students.”

In addition to her blog and a regular column in The L Magazine, Johnson’s art criticism has appeared in New York Magazine, Art in America, The Huffington Post, The Guardian and numerous other print and online publications. In 2008, she became the first blogger to earn an Arts Writers Grant from the Creative Capital Warhol Foundation. Art Fag City won the 2010 and 2011 Village Voice awards for best art blog.

Johnson has lectured on art and the Internet at venues including Yale University, South by Southwest and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Her talk is part of the Willson Center’s 2012-2013 Department-Invited Lecturers Series.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, see http://willson.uga.edu/event/paddy-johnson-lecture.

UGA Willson Center for Humanities and Arts
The Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts is a unit of the Office of the Vice President for Research at UGA. In the service of its mission to promote research and creativity in the humanities and arts, the Willson Center sponsors and participates in numerous public events on and off the UGA campus throughout the academic year. It supports faculty through research grants, lectures, symposia, publications, visiting scholars, visiting artists, collaborative instruction, public conferences, exhibitions and performances. For more information, see http://willson.uga.edu/.