ABOUT THE GALLERY DIRECTOR

Lanier Graham planned a career in both teaching Art History and museum work. His graduate studies at Columbia University started with Renaissance & Baroque Art under Wittkower, Held, and Davis, and ended with Modern Art under Schapiro, Reff, and Collins. He began his curatorial career at New York's Museum of Modern Art in the 1960s. Before deciding to teach full-time, he served as Curator of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Renaissance to Modern), the Norton Simon Museum (Renaissance to Modern), and the National Gallery of Australia (Modern). During the 1970s & 1980s, his European and American exhibitions and acquisitions of painting, sculpture, prints, and photographs ranged from the 15th century to the 20th century.

He has taught Art History, Religious Studies, and Museum Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, the California Institute of Asian Studies, San Francisco, the Naropa Institute, Boulder, and Humboldt State University, Arcata. In 1993 he began teaching Art History and Museum Studies at California State University, East Bay, where he also directs the University Art Gallery. The CSUEB exhibition program presents little explored areas of World Art, Modern Art, and Contemporary Art, such as "Shamanic Power Objects," "Tibetan Thangkas from the Shakyas," "Zen & Modern Art," "Marcel Duchamp: Artist, Humorist, Philosopher," and "Andy Warhol & Social Consciousness."

Graham has written articles, catalogues and books on Western art and its philosophy, as well as World Art and its symbolism. His primary research is focused on relationships between traditional art and modern art, especially the iconography of the transcendent. He has written exhibition catalogues of the work of Monet, van Gogh, Guimard, Matisse, Duchamp, Ernst, Sommer, and de Kooning. His books include Three Centuries Of American Painting (1971 & 1977), Three Centuries Of French Art (1973 & 1975), The Spontaneous Gesture: Prints & Books Of The Abstract Expressionist Era (1987), The Prints Of Willem De Kooning: A Catalogue Raisonne (1991), Goddesses In Art (1997), And Duchamp & Androgyny: Art, Gender, And Metaphysics (2003). He is completing two books: Zen & Modern Art: Echoes Of Buddhism In Western Painting, and Images Of The Infinite: Spiritual Philosophy In Modern Art. Both books, based largely on interviews with leading artists, will examine modernism as a secular search for wholeness. Graham's profile appears in Who's Who in American Art, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in the World.