Alan E. Cober Biography

An accomplished and award-winning illustrator, Alan E. Cober joined the UB Department of Art in 1987 as a visiting professor and Distinguished Visiting Artist. During his tenure at the university, he brought many well-known designers, illustrators and artists to Buffalo to lecture, participate in seminars and exhibit their work. Among them were Sue Coe, Milton Glaser, Guy Billout, Anita Kunz, Marshall Arisman, Gary Kelley, C.F. Payne, Steven Heller and Brad Holland. Cober also persuaded Jerry Pinkney, a children's book illustrator and winner of the Caldecott medal, to teach at UB.

Cober's "Live Assignments" course, the first of it's kind in the country, was a major reason Print magazine called UB's Illustration Program "one of the best in the country" in a 12-page article in the May/June 1991 issue. Cober's strong commitment to community brought about many collaborations with professional organizations and schools, and took important programs beyond the walls of the classroom and into the arts community. In 1990, Cober collaborated with the former Art Director/Communicators Club of Buffalo, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and UB to host the "Innovators of American Illustration" exhibition, which brought the work of major illustrators to Buffalo, along with the illustrators themselves through an eight-part lecture series.

Cober was a pioneering visual journalist whose poignant book, "The Forgotten Society," revealed disturbing conditions in mental institutions, prisons and homes for the aged. He covered the Pope's visit to the U.S. (Rolling Stone, 1987), the 1980 Presidential campaign (Time, 1980) and the shuttle liftoff at Cape Canaveral (for NASA).

His work was published in national magazines like Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, Life, Look and the op-ed pages of The New York Times. He also illustrated 25 books and created a mural for the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.