Chicago Illinois 60603
United States
Join the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Visiting Artists Program for a new season of artists talks by today’s most influential makers and thinkers.
Formalized in 1951 with an endowment by Flora Mayer Witkowsky, the Visiting Artists Program has featured more than 1,000 international artists, designers, and scholars representing more than 70 countries. All events are free and open to the public. Learn more.
Catherine Opie: Monday, September 14, 6–7:30pm
Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
For more than 30 years, Catherine Opie has captured often overlooked aspects of contemporary American life and culture. One of the most important photographers of her generation, her photographic subjects have included early seminal portraits of the LGBTQ+ community, the architecture of Los Angeles' freeway system, high school football players, California surfers, abstract landscapes of National Parks, and many others. Her complex and diverse body of work is political, personal, and highly aesthetic, with the formal, conceptual, and documentary always at play.
Hamza Walker: Monday, September 28, 6–7:30pm
Bill & Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture
Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Hamza Walker is director of The Brick (formerly LAXART), a nonprofit alternative art space in Los Angeles. For over three decades, he has pursued a boundless curiosity about art through the curation of dozens of exhibitions, ranging from solo and thematic exhibitions to the production of new work and career surveys. His recent exhibitions include MONUMENTS, co-curated with Bennett Simpson and Kara Walker, and co-organized with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2025/2026; Gregg Bordowitz: This Is Not A Love Song, 2025; and Betsy Paige Smith: Unshade Me Of You, 2025. Established in 2006 by a generous gift from Bill and Stephanie Sick, this distinguished visiting professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC.
Ronald Rael: Monday, October 19, 6–7:30pm
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Ronald Rael is a trained architect, artist, activist, design technologist, multi-generational rancher, and traditional builder. His work blurs the borders between architecture, art, technology, land-based practices, and social justice, often combining Indigenous and traditional materials and processes with contemporary technologies to explore the contrasts, contradictions, and complexities of contemporary society. Presented in partnership with the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lecture Series in SAIC’s Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects.
McKenzie Wark: Tuesday, November 3, 6–7:15pm
Visit here to join via Zoom
McKenzie Wark is best known for a series of books of 21st-century critical theory, including A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, and Capital is Dead. She has also written works that contribute to an alternate history of Marxism, as well as survey books on contemporary theory and collaborative knowledge production.
Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.: Monday, November 16, 6–7:30pm
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. uses letterpress printing and typography as a tool of protest. His type-driven prints draw on the words of civil rights leaders including Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth to explore issues of race, capitalism, history, and politics. Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Department of Visual Communication Design.
About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For 160 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program consistently ranking among the top programs in the nation by US News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries, and state-of-the-art facilities.
