Charles Garoian, professor of art and director of the Pennsylvania State University School of Art, will present a visiting artist lecture at the West Virginia University Creative Arts Center Wednesday, March 31.

The lecture is titledArt as Performance, Performance as Artand will begin at 5 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (Room 200A).

Garoian holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from California State University, Fresno, and a doctorate in education from Stanford University. He taught studio art and art history in secondary schools for 17 years before coming to Penn State in 1986 as the first education director of the Palmer Museum of Art. A performance artist since 1970, he has developed and implemented critical thinking processes in visual art studio and art history courses based on the radical strategies of performance art. He used similar methods to develop interdisciplinary and intercultural programming and outreach at the Palmer Museum of Art.

He has received a number of grants for his work as a performance artist, a museum educator and as an art educator. In 1994, he received a Fulbright Scholars Award to the Republic of Armenia, where he taught and conducted research in aesthetic education at Yerevan State University.

He has written numerous scholarly articles and his book, Performing Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics (1999), is published by the State University of New York (SUNY) Press.

For more information, call the College of Creative Arts at (304) 293-4841 ext. 3108.