The Seligmann Center at the Citizens Foundation

The Orange County Citizens Foundation presents the grand opening of the Robert Fagan Art Library at the Seligmann Center. Housed in the Seligmanns’ former home, the Robert Fagan Art Library is the only public fine art library in Orange County, featuring an expansive collection of over a thousand books.

The event will include a dedication of the library, poetry readings by three of Robert’s friends and colleagues, Geoffrey O'Brien, Hiroaki Sato, and Lynne Sharon Schwartz, a musical performance by Danish artists Jacob Kirkegaard and Katinka Fogh Vindelev, and a potluck dinner. The event is free and all are welcome.

ROBERT FAGAN
Robert Fagan was a writer, poet, and independent scholar in literature and art history. His poetry and writings were published widely in literary journals including Partisan Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Witness, The Quarterly, Frank and Stand. Four volumes of his work have been published by Red Moon Press: Stepping Out, a collection of poetry, two collections of stories Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Fictions and Lost Cities and Found Objects and Pieces, a collection of poetry, fiction, and criticism.
Robert was an active member of an informal group of poets and writers, who met weekly for more than twenty years to read and discuss each other’s writings. His commitment to art and poetry led him to collaborate with other writers, notably Carol Emswiller and Hiroake Sato. As an independent scholar of art history, Robert’s encyclopedic knowledge and boundless interests encompassed all of world art from prehistoric sculpture to works by contemporary artists. This wide interest is reflected in the extensive art library his family has donated to the Seligmann Center.

READING
Geoffrey O’Brien, Hiroaki Sato, and Lynne Sharon Schwartz will read selections of their own work as well as works by Robert Fagan.

GEOFFREY O’BRIEN is the author of sixteen books including six collections of poetry (most recently Early Autumn) and prose books including Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film 2002-2012; The Fall of the House of Walworth; Sonata for Jukebox; The Browser's Ecstasy; The Phantom Empire; and Dream Time: Chapters from the Sixties.
He contributes regularly to The New York Review of Books and is editor-in-chief of The Library of America.

H I R O A K I  S A T O is a leading translator of Japanese poetry into English. In 1982, Sato and Burton Watson won the1982 PEN American Center Translation Prize for From the Country of Eight
Islands: Anthology of Japanese Poetry and the 1999 Japan-United States Friendship Commission Literary Translation Prize for Breeze Through Bamboo: Kanshi of Ema Saikō. His more recent books include Miyazawa Kenji: Selections Nishiwaki, Junzaburō: Poems, and Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology. Sato was president of the Haiku Society of America, from 1979 to 1981. A senior research fellow at JETRO New York until June 2013, Hiroaki has written a monthly column, “The View from New York,” for The Japan Times since 2000.

LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ is the author of 23 books, including novels, short story collections, non-fiction, poetry, and translations from Italian.. Her first novel, Rough Strife, was
nominated for a National Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway First Novel Award. Her other novels include The Writing on the Wall; In the Family Way: An Urban Comedy; Disturbances in the Field; and Leaving Brooklyn, which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her most recent book is a collection of essays, This Is Where We Came In, published in March. She is also the author of the memoir, Ruined by Reading, and two poetry collections, In Solitary and See You in the Dark. In 2010 she edited an anthology of essays and interviews called The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W. G Sebald. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and has taught writing and literature here and abroad, and is currently on the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars. 

PERFORMANCE:
The sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard and classical singer Katinka Fogh Vindelev are joining forces to compose and perform Tone Poem for Richard Strauss, an interpretation of composer Richard Strauss' final completed works, "Vier Letzte Lieder" (Four Last Songs) from 1948. By extracting and working with minute fragments and phrases, they tease out what they see as the essence of these songs written so close to the composer’s death.

JACOB KIRKEGAARD is an artist and composer working in carefully selected environments to generate recordings that are used in compositions or combined with video imagery in visual,
spatial installations. His works reveal unheard sonic phenomena and present listening as a means of experiencing the world. Kirkegaard has recorded sonic environments as different as subterranean geyser vibrations, empty rooms in Chernobyl, Arctic calving glaciers and tones generated by the human inner ear itself. Currently based in New York, Kirkegaard has presented his works at galleries, museums and concert spaces throughout the world, including MoMA in New York, Louisiana in Denmark, KW in Berlin, The Menil Collection & the Rothko Chapel in Houston and at the Aichi Triennale in Nagoya, Japan.

KATINKA FOGH VINDELEV is a modern classical singer who works in the fields of contemporary classical music and experimental sound art. In 2012 she formed the innovative, classical ensemble "We like We" in Copenhagen. Their debut album is to be released on “The Being Music” label in the fall of 2014. Now based in Berlin, Katinka works as a soloist with various bands and classical ensembles, touring around the world. She is currently developing a solo performance called i am now: that mixes her classical voice with vintage synthesizers. In July 2015 Katinka will make her opera debut in a new and innovative production, commissioned by the Copenhagen Opera Festival. 

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