University of Illinois Chicago
School of Art & Art History
106 Jefferson Hall
929 W Harrison
Chicago, Illinois 60607
artandarthistory.uic.edu
The School of Art & Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago is excited to announce our new Faculty.
History, theory and practice are entwined endeavors in the UIC School of Art & Art History. Located in a diverse, public, urban, research university, our programs (BA, MFA in Art, BA in Art Education, MA, PHD in Art History, MA in Museum and Exhibition Studies, Gallery 400) ignite intellectual and creative curiosity, empowering students to expand the boundaries of the possible. Students are encouraged to engage departments across the university and communities throughout Chicago.
Department of Art
Nate Young received his BA from Northwestern College in Minnesota in 2004, MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2009, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009. His work investigates systems that attempt to solidify a static relationship between power and identity. He uses materials related to ideas of religion, magic, blackness and other authoritative gestures. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Stations, Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy (2016); The Unseen Evidence of Things Substantiated, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2015); But Not Yet: in the spirit of linguistics, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago (2015); Retreat, curated by Theaster Gates, Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago (2014); Tony Lewis, Nate Young, Room East, New York (2014); Joy, the Suburban, Chicago (2013); the Soap Factory’s Minnesota Biennial (2013); Fore, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2012); Go Tell It on the Mountain, the California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2012). Nate is the recipient of the Knight Arts Challenge Fellowship from the Knight Foundation (2014), the Bush Fellowship for Visual Artists (2010) and the Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists (2014). His work is in notable public collections, including the Walker Art Center. Young is co-founder and director of the artist run exhibition space, The Bindery Projects, in Minneapolis. He is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.
Visiting Faculty
Cauleen Smith is the recent recipient of the Alpert Prize, and the Ellsworth Kelly Award. Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Operating in multiple materials and arenas, Smith roots her work firmly within the discourse of mid-20th century experimental film. Drawing from structuralism, third world cinema, and science fiction, she makes things that deploy the tactics of these disciplines while offering a phenomenological experience for spectators and participants. Her films, objects, and installations have been featured in group exhibitions with the Studio Museum of Harlem; Houston Contemporary Art Museum; Yerba Buena Center for Art, San Francisco; the New Museum, New York; D21 Leipzig; and Decad, Berlin. She has had solo shows for her films and installations at The Kitchen, New York; MCA Chicago; and Threewalls, Chicago. She shows her drawings and 2D work with Corbett vs. Dempsey. Smith is the recipient of several grants and awards including the Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Creative Capital Film/Video, Chicago 3Arts Grant, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chicago Expo Artadia Award, and Rauschenberg Residency. Smith was born in Riverside, California and grew up in Sacramento. She earned a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco Sate University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television. Smith is based in the great city of Chicago.
Department of Art History
Andrew Finegold received his doctorate in Pre-Columbian art history from Columbia University in 2012, completing a dissertation on the visual rhetoric of narrativity in wall paintings depicting battle scenes from Epiclassic period Mesoamerica. He has since held teaching positions at Skidmore College and Wake Forest University and offered courses on Ancient American topics at Columbia University and Pratt Institute.
His current book project, which centers on a close analysis of a single Classic Maya dish, examines the creative potentials attributed to negative spaces by ancient Mesoamericans. As with dozens of other Maya vessels, the so-called Resurrection Plate was pierced with a hole typically interpreted as “killing” it—releasing its spirit and ending its functionality following the death of its owner. However, the congruence of this perforation with the iconography painted on the dish suggests the drilling of the vessel was understood as being akin to several distinct, yet related ritual activities associated with creation, abundance, and life: the breaking of the living earth to release its agricultural bounty, the drilling of fire as an act of temporal renewal, and the piercing of human flesh in auto-sacrificial rites. As these ideas are examined in successive chapters, the discussion will be expanded to include a range of beliefs, practices, and material culture that together serve to demonstrate the consistent, widespread, and transmedial experience of voids as fecund nodes of generative potential in ancient Mesoamerica.
Current Faculty:
Art History
Elise Archias / Catherine Becker / Nina Dubin / Andrew Finegold / Ömür Harmanşah / Hannah Higgins / Lisa Yun Lee / Jonathan Mekinda / Martha Pollak / Therese Quinn / Lorelei Stewart / Blake Stimson
Selected Art History EMERITI
Ellen Baird / Robert Bruegmann / Victor Margolin / Virginia E. Miller / Robert Munman / David Sokol
Art
Dianna Frid / Beate Geissler / Doug Ischar / Silvia Malagrino / Matthew Metzger / Dan Peterman / Sabrina Raaf / Jennifer Reeder / Cauleen Smith / Deborah Stratman / Tony Tasset / Nate Young
Selected Art EMERITI
Julia Fish / Olivia Gude / Gary Minnix
