The Pacific Northwest’s vibrant history with art will come to life in the new David and Anne McCosh Memorial Visiting Lecture Series on the Northwest at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art at the Portland Art Museum, will be inaugural speaker for the series about art in the Pacific Northwest. Laing-Malcolmson’s talk, “The Northwest School Beyond Seattle: White Writing and Landscape in the Mid-20th Century,” will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 2, at the UO museum.

Laing-Malcolmson will discuss how the Northwest School and its leaders — Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan and Guy Anderson — inspired artists from Seattle to Oregon and how during the 1930s and 1950s, the Northwest was considered the premier center for modern art. Tobey is known for his use of “white writing,” an overlay of white or light-colored calligraphic symbols on an abstract field.

According to McCosh Associate Curator Danielle Knapp, the lecture series will focus on regional artists who are known nationally and internationally, and it will discuss how their work has affected the Northwest.

“In the spirit of David and Ann McCosh, we want to provide a program that will stimulate community discussion in the trends, theories and creative practices that shaped the artistic culture of our region,” Knapp said.

—By Craig Garcia, University Communications intern