BOSTON, MA.- The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents Closer in the Café: Lawrence Weschler, a conversation between renowned culture writer Lawrence Weschler and writer Robert Birnbaum on Wednesday, Jan. 28 at 6:30 p.m., in the intimate setting of the ICA’s Water Café. Tickets are $8 general admission; $5 members, students, and seniors, and can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling (617) 478-3103 . Café menu available during the event.

Lawrence Weschler, author of the hugely popular and award-winning Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (2006) and writer for the New Yorker, talks about his two new books with Robert Birnbaum, writer and editor-at-large of the literary cultural website www.identitytheory.com.

Compiled from 30 years of separate conversations with artists Robert Irwin and David Hockney, the books, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Expanded Edition, Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin and True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney (both University of California Press, 2009) present diametrically opposite accounts of the history of modern art and the significance of the artists’ work within that context.

Weschler will sign books immediately after the talk.

Lawrence Weschler
A New Yorker staff writer for more than 20 years, Lawrence Weschler is the author of a dozen books of creative nonfiction, including the 2006 collection of essays Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Since 2001, Weschler has been the director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, and in 2006 he accepted the position of artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award and a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award.

Robert Birnbaum
Robert Birnbaum is editor-at-large of the literary cultural website www.identitytheory.com, where he has interviewed many authors including Howard Zinn, Sebastian Junger, Jonathan Safran Foer, Douglas Coupland, Martin Amis, Tom McGuane and many, many more.