MCCC Art Professor Mel Leipzig to Examine Early Renaissance Painting Nov. 17 11/3/09 West Windsor, N.J. - Mel Leipzig, nationally renowned artist and professor of art at Mercer County Community College, will examine one of the great periods of the art of painting in his talk, "Early Renaissance Painting 1420 - 1490," on Tuesday, November 17 at 12 noon. Leipzig's slide lecture takes place in the Communications Building, CM 107, on MCCC's West Windsor campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. Free and open to the public, his talk concludes Mercer's Distinguished Lecture Series for the Fall 2009 semester. Leipzig will explore the techniques of noted artists Botticelli, Perugino, Uccello, Masaccio, Mantegna, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Piero di Cosimo, Piero della Francesca, and Giovanni Bellini. "From a technical point of view, I will discuss why the painting of the Early Renaissance is so popular and important for modern artists," Leipzig said. "I will explain the period's historical significance, its humanism, and its relation to the development of modern science. I want to engage people in the process of seeing things from different perspectives. I want them to become more sensitive to various artistic approaches." Art Professor Mel Leipzig   Leipzig has participated in numerous one-man and group shows from the East Coast to Moscow. His paintings are often on display at the Gallery Henoch in New York City and are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Jersey State Museum, the Morris Museum, the Noyes Museum, the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, the Jersey City Museum, and the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2006, Leipzig was elected to the National Academy, an honorary association of professional artists, museums and fine arts schools in New York City. He received a Fulbright Grant to Paris and four grants for painting from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. He was the first recipient of the MCCC Distinguished Teaching Award (1980), and was one of the last individual artists to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1996). Other awards include a Fulbright Traveling Fellowship, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and one of the last individual artist grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1995. He studied at Cooper Union, Yale University and Pratt Institute, where he earned his M.F.A. To learn more about the lectures at Mercer County Community College, click here or call 609-570-3324. Directions to MCCC Return to Current News

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