Pioneering Pop Artist Rosalyn Drexler to Receive Honorary Doctorate

Wednesday, 11 April 2007 23:08

PHILADELPHIA , PA – Pop Art pioneer Rosalyn Drexler will receive an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree and address more than 500 graduates and their friends and families at the 129^th Commencement of The University of the Arts on May 24 at Philadelphia’s famed Academy of Music.“  Honorary doctorates are a tribute to individuals who use their creativity to shine and demonstrate art’s power to transform,” said UArts President Miguel Angel Corzo.  “It gives me great pleasure knowing that the University will honor an artist as committed to her crafts as Rosalyn.  The versatility and interdisciplinary spirit of her work exemplifies the spirit of The University of the Arts.”

As early as 1960, Drexler began utilizing pop culture icons like gangster movies, pulp detective novels, King Kong and Marilyn Monroe in her work.  Many of her paintings capture the spirit of a song verse, a turning point in a novel or a scene in a movie.  To this day, her aim is to expose society’s raw nerves in emotionally charged, ambiguous scenes of sex, violence and the isolation of man.

The University’s Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery hosted her retrospective To Smithereens: Paintings 1961–2003 in 2004.  Another notable Drexler exhibition includes Eleven from the Reuben Gallery at the Guggenheim Museum (1965).  A Guggenheim Fellow, Drexler has work included in the collections of the Whitney, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and Walker Art Center.

Vulgar Lives, the latest of her 12 novels, was released in February.  An accomplished author and playwright, Drexler has claimed three Obies, an Emmy and four Rockefeller Grants for playwriting.  In January 1970, Drexler’s THE LINE OF LEAST EXISTENCE, a new play with rock music, opened at South Street’s Theater of the Living Arts, starring then unknowns Judd Hirsch and Danny DeVito and her daughter Rachel Drexler.

The University of the Arts is the nation’s first and only university dedicated to the visual, performing and communication arts. Its 2,300 students are enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs on its campus in the heart of Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts.  Its history as a leader in educating creative individuals spans more than 130 years.  Visit : www.uarts.edu/