Visual Arts

Visual Arts Scholar Theaster Gates's Art Basel Exhibition Draws Celebrities

Theaster Gates by Elizabeth Lippman for the New York Times

Well-regarded sculptor and scholar of urban planning, Theaster Gates, professor in Visual Arts at UChicago, excels at discovering art in ordinary objects. His enthusiasm and skill at creating unusual exhibitions drew high-visibility celebrities such as Kanye West, Emma Roberts, and Venus Williams to his Art Basel exhibition “The Black Image Corporation” a Prada-sponsored art installation in Miami this month. Gates is “that rare artist who seems to fill the space between art and ordinary life,” said Miuccia Prada, a fashion icon.

Visual Arts Alumna to Publish Work on Cloistered Nuns

While researching Dedicated to God: An Oral History of Cloistered Nuns, Abbie Reese, MFA'13, spent six years learning and recording the individual stories of a community of cloistered monastic nuns living in a 25,000-square-foot enclosure outside Rockford, Illinois. Those stories and Reese's accompanying photographs will be published in November as part of the Oxford University Press's Oxford Oral History series, and mark one of the first times an author has been allowed access to an enclosure where nuns observe monastic silence. Reese graduated from the Department of Visual Arts in 2013, and has included photos and video from the project on her website. Her photos were also shown in the 2013 MFA Thesis exhibition, which can be found here.

UChicago Faculty Members Included in Newcity Art's "Art 50: Chicago's Artist's Artists"

Several faculty members of the Department of Visual Arts were featured on Newcity Art's list of "Chicago Artist's Artists." Newcity Art is devoted to coverage of visual arts in Chicago, and includes news, reviews, and features. Jessica Stockholder, Professor and Chair, was praised for the way that Chicago has featured in and informed her work, particularly with "Color Jam," her summer 2012 installation. Laura Letinsky, Professor, was noted for her innovative "constructions," which combine the notions of reproductions and originals, as well as William Pope.L, Associate Professor, for the ways he explores "the abject fantasies underpinning the absurdity of black male identity—and, by extension, all American identities."

Read the full profiles here.

Jessica Stockholder, Current Students, and Alumni Discuss Color at Logan Center

On February 8, Jessica Stockholder, Chair and Professor in Visual Arts, Jonathan Ullyot, PhD'10 and instructor in the College, and Nicholas Wong, a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature, and others gathered at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts to discuss the concept of color. This dialogue, presented by the Arts|Science Initiative, is part of The Cabinet, a monthly series seeking to explore multiple perspectives surrounding a particular theme, such as color, narrative, silence, and many more.

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