UB's Baldy Center to Host Workshop on Government Policy, Cultural Production and Personal Privacy

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The impact of government policies on cultural production and personal privacy and the art sector's response to censorship will be the subject of an interdisciplinary art and law workshop to be held Sept. 10 at the University at Buffalo.

"Government Policy, Cultural Production, Personal Privacy" will be held from 1-5:15 p.m. in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus. Organized by the UB Art Galleries and UB Law School, the workshop will be hosted by the UB Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy.

Two panels will be presented as part of the workshop. The first will be an historical discussion of the McCarthy era and the ramifications of the 1966 Freedom of Information Act on the visual arts. Participants will be Nancy Buchanan, professor in the CalArts School of Film and Video; Arnold Mesches, artist and professor, University of Florida, Gainesville; David Craven, professor of art history, University of New Mexico and author of "Abstract Expressionism as Cultural Critique: Dissent during the McCarthy Period," and Nils Olsen, professor and dean of the UB Law School.

The second panel will address contemporary threats to free expression, focusing on the Patriot Act, censorship in the arts and trends in the age of the Internet. Panelists will be Lee Albert, professor, UB Law School; Niels Bonde, artist and professor, Malmö Art Academy, Copenhagen; Marjorie Heins, founding director, The Free Expression Policy Project and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law; Svetlana Mintcheva, director of arts advocacy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and Miguel Ruiz, assistant professor, Department of Library and Information Studies, UB School of Informatics.

In conjunction with the workshop, the UB Art Gallery will present two contemporary art exhibitions: "Arnold Mesches: The FBI Files" and a group exhibition, "Shutters," which will consider the interface of monitoring strategies and domestic spaces. Receptions for both exhibitions will be held from 5-7 p.m. Sept. 10.

Both the workshop and receptions are free and open to the public; however, registration for the workshop is required by contacting the Baldy Center at baldyctr@buffalo.edu or call 645-2102. For more information, go to http://www.law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter.