A Conversation with Michael Childers and James Gavin.
A VIEW FROM THE HOLLYWOOD HILLS;
Artists and Architects including Hockney and Warhol
Monday, July 20, 2026
12:30 PM
Stanley Kunitz Common Room
Join us for a conversation between photographer Michael Childers and his long-time friend James Gavin about Michael’s early career in the Hollywood art world and the renowned artists and architects he photographed, such as David Hockney, his friend of over 60 years, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Frank Gehry, Andrea Zittel and Sam Francis, just to name a few.
This event is free and open to the public.
To join us virtually, visit our YouTube Channel and look for the “Upcoming live streams” section. The majority of our public events are available via YouTube live stream with the presenters’ permission.
About Our Speakers
Born in North Carolina, Michael Childers attended UCLA Film School where he directed student films and began his photography career studying with Robert Heineken and Edmund Teske. Michael created the mixed media work for the record-breaking run of the off-Broadway musical Oh! Calcutta! for Kenneth Tynan, leading to an invitation for photographic work at Sir Laurence Olivier’s National Theater in London. He remains the only American photographer invited to do so. He was a founding photographer for Andy Warhol’s Interview and After Dark magazines; and produced Dance magazine covers featuring the Joffrey Ballet, The Royal Ballet, and Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and co-authored Bejart: The World of Dance.
From his LA studios, Michael photographed 200+ magazine covers including GQ, New York, TV Guide, Esquire, Los Angeles, Elle, Paris Match, Life, London Sunday Times Magazine, and English and Italian Vogue. He created 150+ album covers and film posters for major studios and worked as a photographer on many films, and won 2 Art Direction Awards for the movie posters for Terminator and Siesta.
In 2003, the Palm Springs Desert Museum presented a forty-year retrospective of Michael’s work, Icons and Legends. In 2006, La Dolce Vita: The Photography of Michael Childers, was exhibited at the Los Angeles Film Festival; the Palm Springs Art Museum presented Celebration of Three Hollywood Photographers: George Hurrell, Sid Avery, In 2007, Rockin’ Hollywood at the Queen Mary Gallery, Long Beach featured portraits of rock-and-roll icons and music legends. Author Author, featuring Childers’ images of celebrated authors, playwrights, poets and screenwriters, was exhibited in a dozen major U.S. libraries, including the Beinecke Library Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and the Monroe C. Gutman Library at Harvard University in 2019.
He has lectured in both the USA and Europe about his late partner John Schlesinger’s classic Oscar winning film: Midnight Cowboy.
His photos are in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery; Victoria & Albert Museum; British Film Institute Library in London; Palm Springs Art Museum; the University of Texas at Austin – Harry Ransom Center; UC Riverside Photography Museum, Laguna Art Museum; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Marion Center for the Photographic Arts, Santa Fe; Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Beverly Hills; Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts; San Luis Obispo Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; Scripps College Museum of Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Marquette University Art Gallery, Milwaukee; Santa Monica Museum of Art; Yale University Beinecke Library; Yale Center of British Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Cal State Fullerton Art Gallery.
Having a Ball, a large retrospective of Childers’ works, opened at the Palm Springs Art Museum on January 13th, 2018, and Starstruck, a retrospective of his works on Hollywood films, opened January 31, 2018, at the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.
Michael won a Best Short Documentary Film Award in 2019 from the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival for the film he produced called I Knew Andy Warhol.
Michael can be seen in the forthcoming documentary, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy on Netflix and plays Oscar Wilde’s photographer in the independent film All About Oscar to be released 2025. His next personal project will be a publication entitled Divine Creatures, a drag ball and white party photographic collection from the 1970’s and 2000’s. November 23, 2024 Michael shared photographs and spoke brilliantly about his lifetime of memories with artist and dear friend David Hockney at the Palm Springs Museum of Art. April of 2025 Michael spoke at the David Geffen Academy of Motion Pictures. Michael will also be featured in the television series “Artists in Conversation” with the Yale British Museum of Art, highlighting his work and encounters with many renowned British artists and legends. Michael currently resides in Palm Springs, California.
Photo: Michael Childer
Called “a killer biographer” in the Hollywood Reporter, James Gavin is the author of six acclaimed books and dozens of New York Times features; he is a worldwide public speaker, a Grammy nominee, and a recipient of two ASCAP Deems Taylor-Virgil Thomson Awards for excellence in music journalism. People chose his most recent book, George Michael: A Life (Abrams), as one of its Top Summer Reads; the Times called it “engrossing … thorough and well-rounded.” Of Gavin’s Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne (Atria), an NAACP Image Award nominee and one of the Oprah Winfrey’s Top 25 Summer reads, Liz Smith wrote: “[It] may just be one of the best biographies about show business, race, love, sex, and music ever written.” Gavin’s Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster) received another rave from the Times (“fascinating, suspenseful, musically detailed and insightful”). Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker (Knopf) was proclaimed “a landmark in entertainment biography” by the Hollywood Reporter. Gavin’s first book, Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret (Grove-Weidenfeld) won him his first Deems Taylor-Virgil Thomson Award; the San Francisco Chronicle termed it “wild and wistful … informed, insightful, definitive.” Gavin’s Cool Heat: The Dangerous Jazz Life of Anita O’Day (Equinox Publishing, 2026) was called “an insightful page-turner of a biography” by actress and singer Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. The author is now writing a biography of Doris Day.
Gavin’s articles have also appeared in Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, NPR Music, the Boston Globe, and NPR Music. His essay for Ella Fitzgerald – The Legendary Decca Recordings earned him his Grammy nod. Gavin has made hundreds of radio appearances, including interviews on NPR, the BBC, and Australia’s ABC Network; he has been seen on Today, Good Morning America, and PBS NewsHour. From 2011 through 2017, Gavin toured as narrator, host, and author of Stormy Weather: The Life and Music of Lena Horne, a show that starred former Supreme Mary Wilson.
