Posted on February 21, 2007 at 2:40 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Artist Robert Irwin has been awarded the 2007 Ireland Distinguished Visiting Scholar Prize at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Irwin will lecture on “The Nature of Abstraction” at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, in the Alys Stephens Center’s Jemison Concert Hall, 1200 10th Ave. S. The lecture is free and open to the public. Call 205-934-4941 or 205-966-7190 for details.

As the Ireland Visiting Scholar, Irwin also will meet with honors and art students and UAB Department of Art and Art History faculty.

Robert Irwin is a pivotal artist in American art, said James Alexander, M.F.A., professor of art at UAB. The scope of his work includes serious explorations into the disciplines of visual perception, human psychology, architectural space and philosophy. His work as an artist and theoretician is a demonstration of the symbiotic relationship between the arts and sciences in the search for newer understanding of the human condition.

“For more than three decades Irwin has explored the boundaries of what is art and has challenged his viewers to redefine their role as passive observers to a more active and inquisitive role,” Alexander said. “His international reputation is based both upon his site-generated installation sculpture in public spaces and his theoretical writings on art and visual perception. Irwin’s works are not merely to be viewed but rather to be experienced and constructed through a process of observation and recall.”

Some of his works are in permanent collections at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Art Institute of Chicago and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Irwin taught at Chouinard Art Institute, University of California at Los Angeles and University of California at Irvine. He has been named the John J. Hill Professor at the University of Minnesota, J. Paul Getty Lecturer at the University of Southern California, Cullinan Professor at Rice University, Andrew Ritchie Lecturer at Yale University and Yaseen Lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1984 received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship Award.

Artist Robert Irwin, 2007 Ireland Distinguished Visiting Scholar at UAB, will lecture on “The Nature of Abstraction” at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, in the Alys Stephens Center’s Jemison Concert Hall, 1200 10th Ave. S.