Buzz Spector is an American artist, writer, and educator whose work often explores books, language, and the act of reading. Born in 1948, he earned a BA in art from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and an MFA from the University of Chicago. Spector has published several books, including Buzzwords, a collection of interviews, and The Book Maker’s Desire, a collection of essays on art. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. He received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1991 and the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art Award in 2013. Spector taught for many years at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he directed the graduate program in painting, and later served as a professor of art at Cornell University.
