Beauvais Lyons holds the esteemed position of Chancellor’s Professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he has been dedicatedly instructing students in the art of printmaking since 1985. His academic journey saw him earn an MFA degree from Arizona State University in 1983, following his earlier accomplishment of a BFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980. For insight into his imaginative mock-academic projects through the Hokes Archives, you can explore his website.
Lyons’ prolific career has brought forth a plethora of solo exhibitions, showcasing his artistic prowess in over 60 museums and galleries both within the United States and beyond its borders. His artistic footprint extends to numerous public collections, finding a place in esteemed institutions like the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, DC, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, PA. Recognition followed him as he received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2002, enabling him to teach at the Fine Arts Academy in Poznañ, Poland. In 2014, he further garnered acclaim with the Santo Foundation Artist Award.
Lyons’ creative narrative over the past three decades has been an exploration of diverse forms of academic parody. His canvas has stretched to cover topics as varied as archaeology, folk art, medicine, zoology, and various forms of biography. Printmaking, a medium deeply entwined with the culture of knowledge dissemination, forms a central thread in much of his work. Lyons’ distinctive approach to academic parody is a meticulous weaving of elements, both visual and conceptual, within his exhibitions. He expertly employs repeated stylistic motifs and serial imagery to achieve a harmonious flow that ties his exhibitions together thematically.
The genre of academic parody, as Lyons portrays it, is a boundless realm with the potential to take on any guise, style, or medium to mirror and comment on virtually any system of knowledge or belief. In this creative endeavor, his intention is not merely to craft works of fiction but to also articulate profound truths, resulting in an artistry that is intellectually engaging, conceptually stimulating, and artistically rich.
