Artist Glenn Goldberg and art historian Elisabeth Kirsch will discuss the exhibit Lester Goldman: Flights of Fancy Fulfilled. Sean Kelley, the Library’s volunteer chief curator of art, will moderate the discussion, which complements the Library’s exhibit of Goldman’s paintings and ceramics in the Library’s North Gallery. Many works have never been on public display.

Goldman, professor of painting at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1966 until his death in 2005, abandoned figurative portraiture for more playful abstract experimentation: electric colors, sweeping lines, personal and political symbols, and a variety of media from sculpture to performance. The exhibit was made possible with the support of Kathrin Goldman, her family, and volunteer curators Andrea Phillips and Stephanie Finkelstein.

Goldberg and Kirsch will discuss the symbols in Goldman’s work and the philosophy behind his creative process. Goldberg studied at the New York Studio School and received a MFA from Queens College. He was named the 1996 Heilman Artist and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Kirsch has been a curator of contemporary art, administrator, historian, and critic since 1976. Kirsch was a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in 1980, and she has curated more than one hundred exhibitions of photography, contemporary art, and American Indian art for not-for-profit and public institutions.

Sean Kelley operated the Sean Kelley Gallery in the Uptown Theatre Building at 36th and Broadway from 1989 - 1994. Kelley co-founded Grand Arts in 1995, a non-profit art gallery and foundation, where he was the director until 2003.

The exhibit is open in the North Gallery of the Central Library from September 18 to October 31, 2009.