Al Harris F., director of the UB gallery and center, said the series, "Art at the End of the Century: A Dialogue," will present important artists in reflection and appraisal of their field. UB will sponsor the series with other local organizations.

This spring UB will collaborate with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery to present lectures by noted artists Peter Halley (Feb. 15), Adrian Piper (Feb. 29) and Ronald Jones (March 28). The lectures will be held at 8 p.m. in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery auditorium.

Abstractionist Peter Halley is best known for his paintings of cells and conduits grounded in his concern for social space. This concern has resulted in a 15-year project involving a number of media, including computer-generated virtual realities. Halley has published essays and has written three books.

Adrian Piper is one of the best-known, most philosophically challenging and respected artists of her generation. Her activist work encompasses several modes of art making-conceptualism, performance, popular media interventions and traditional object-making. Piper is also a professor of philosophy at Wellesley College.

Ronald Jones, a sculptor and installation artist, has expanded the traditional notion of sculpture by working his powerful observations about such subjects as AIDS, Vietnam and the Holocaust into operatic design, bonsai gardens and cyberspace. Jones is Senior Critic at Yale University and serves as a visiting professor at both the Rhode Island School of Design and Bennington College.

The lecture series will be followed at 8 p.m. April 18 by a panel discussion that will feature arts professionals from the Buffalo community reacting to the lectures. The panel discussion in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery auditorium will be moderated by Harris F. and will be followed by an open discussion.

The panel will consist of Roberley Bell, assistant professor in the School of Art and Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology; Ronald Ehmke, Buffalo-based writer and performer and former performance curator at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Richard Huntington, art critic for The Buffalo News and visual artist, and Carol Zemel, professor of art history at UB and award-winning author of several distinguished scholarly books, including "Utopian Promises: Themes of Modernity in the Work of Vincent Van Gogh."

All events will take place in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery auditorium. Admission will be free for UB faculty and students and for members of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. For all others admission will be $4 (adults) and $3 (students and senior citizens).