Avenali Lectures

Peter Sellars, Avenali Chair in the Humanities 1996-1997

“Getting Real: The Arts in Post-NEA America” || March 13, 1997

Occasional Paper || In addition to delivering the Avenali Lecture in 1996-1997, opera and theatre director, teacher, and activist Peter Sellars organized other events and taught two courses: “Art as Social Action,” and “Invisible World.” The latter was posited upon the notion that “art should render the intangible so that people can feel deeply its power and presence.”

In an earlier visit to Berkeley, in 1995, Sellars directed at the Zellerbach Playhouse the June Jordan/John Adams work, I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, which was later produced in Montreal, at Lincoln Center in New York, and at the Edinburgh Festival. Educated at Harvard University, Sellars has taught at the Julliard School and Georgetown University. More recently, he has held numerous visiting professorships in the World Arts and Cultures Program at UCLA. Among his many honors and awards, Sellars held a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for the period 1983-1988.