The Sunday, Jan. 3 issue of the Washington Post Magazine features a cover story entitled Lives to Remember, Nine Stories, Nine Legacies, in which Matthew Spiegelberg '05 is memorialized with a touching story about his life and art, as well as several images of his work. Spiegelberg, who received his B.F.A. in painting from MICA, went on to Hunter College in New York to work on his M.F.A. beginning in 2007 and was killed on April 18, 2009, after falling between two subway cars in New York City.

The work that is left behind after Spiegelberg's death "described a remarkable view of the world," the Washington Post Magazine article states, calling the artist's work "splashy abstracts ... in colors so bright that they vibrate." "It was the vision of someone that a few people had known intimately and many had known only distantly: electric but controlled, complex but articulate, hard-won and unfinished."

"Even as graduate students go, Spiegelberg was unusually driven," the article says about the artist who grew up in Washington, D.C.

"He paints so emotionally imagery that you would expect was made by a machine," Hunter professor Joel Carreiro told the Washington Post Magazine. At the heart of Spiegelberg's work, Carreiro said, was the "gulf between two modes of expression: the long history of painting and ‘contemporary visual culture,' the digital images that swamp our everyday lives. ‘I think he was trying to find a way to make those two things meet, and find a way to actually get to sincere, earnest expression.' "

Paintings that Spiegelberg created while at Hunter are hung in a memorial show through Jan. 16 at Hunter's Times Square Gallery (450 W. 41st St., New York) as part of the MFA Thesis Exhibition Fall 2009.  If he were still alive, his work would be hanging on the walls of the gallery for the exhibition, and the students wanted to honor that and dedicate the whole front room of the show to Spiegelberg's works. 

Founded in 1826, MICA is among the top visual arts colleges in the nation. It enrolls 1,714 undergraduate and 218 graduate students from 48 states and 52 foreign countries, offering programs of study leading to the bachelor of fine arts (B.F.A.), master of arts (M.A.), and master of fine arts (M.F.A.) degrees. It also offers post-baccalaureate certificate programs and a full slate of credit and noncredit courses for adults, college-bound students, and children. MICA is recognized as an important cultural resource for the Baltimore/Washington region, sponsoring many public and community-outreach programs-including more than 100 exhibitions by students, faculty, and nationally and internationally known artists annually-as well as artists' residencies, film series, lectures, readings, and performances.