William Andersen will discuss the influence of traditional culture on contemporary artists in Taiwan, with a detour to contemporary art in China, on Thurs., April 24, at 1 p.m.

The lecture, which is free, will take place in Gallery One, 3253 N. Downer Avenue (Vogel Hall) on the UWM campus.

Andersen, currently of the Department of Visual Art in the UWM Peck School of the Arts, has spent several years in Taiwan as a Fulbright fellow and a teacher, and has traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia. He graduated from UW-Milwaukee in 1992 with a BFA and spent two years in Taiwan beginning in 1994, holding several one-person shows while teaching. He received a Master's degree in 2001 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and then returned to Taiwan on a Fulbright Fellowship to study traditional and contemporary Chinese art.

Andersen has been teaching Art Survey and drawing at UWM since the fall of 2001. His most recent body of work includes semi-autobiographical landscapes and abstract paintings.

The Institute of Visual Arts focuses on one-person exhibitions, giving young artists their first institutional exhibition, allowing mid-career artists extended surveys of their oeuvre and commissioning mature artists to create new bodies of work. Exhibitions range from contemporary architecture, film, installation, and painting to performance, photography, sculpture and video.

For further information, go to www.uwm.edu/SOA/inova