Renowned Artist and Mercer Art Professor Mel Leipzig To Give Lecture at MCCC Dec. 4

In one of his last lectures before his retirement, Mercer County Community College (MCCC)'s own esteemed Professor of Art Mel Leipzig will discuss his 25 favorite paintings from other artists on Tuesday, Dec. 4, at noon in the Communications Building, room 110.  His talk, entitled “Professor Mel Leipzig Retrospective,” is the part of the college's Fall 2012 Distinguished Lecture Series and will be held at the college’s West Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road.  The lecture is free and open to the public. (Please note: this lecture has been rescheduled from Oct. 30 due to Hurricane Sandy).

In his talk, Leipzig will discuss works by artists ranging from the Renaissance to modern art. A few of the paintings being discussed are by Italian artists Giotto and Piero della Francesca, Spanish artists Velazquez and Picasso, Flemish artist Brueghel, Dutch artists Vermeer and Van Gogh, French artists Manet and Matisse, and American artists Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Edward Hopper and Fairfield Porter.

A much-heralded painter and lifelong Trenton resident, Leipzig has garnered a multitude of awards and honors. His works are part of the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, The White House, and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum. In 2006 he was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York, and was recently featured in the November 2012 issue of Professional Artist magazine, with his artwork on the cover.

Locally, Leipzig has had shows at the Pennington School, Rider University, Richard Stockton College and the West Windsor Arts Council.

In 2006, Leipzig was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York. His awards and recognitions include a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and a grant in painting from the National Endowment for the Arts. Leipzig studied at Cooper Union, Yale University and Pratt Institute, where he earned his M.F.A. Art critic Burton Wasserman has described him as "New Jersey's greatest living painter."  Leipzig has been a member of the MCCC faculty since 1968.

For more information on MCCC’s Distinguished Lecture Series, call 609-570-3324 or visit www.mccc.edu/events.