School of Art Fall Visiting Speaker Series

The University of Houston School of Art is thrilled to announce its 2019–2020 visiting speaker series featuring practitioners and thinkers at the forefront of contemporary art and design. These distinguished guests offer a rich range of approaches to the most pertinent issues facing today’s makers and scholars. Join us for these compelling talks; three occur this Fall and three more will be announced in the Spring.

All lectures take place in Dudley Recital Hall, located in the School of Art on the University of Houston campus, beginning at 6:30pm with a 5:30pm welcome reception. All events are free and open to the public.

Charlene Villaseñor Black is Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, where her research and teaching focus on the art of the early modern Iberian world and contemporary Chicana/o/x art. In 2016 she was awarded UCLA’s 2016 Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence. She has held grants from the NEH, ACLS, Fulbright, Mellon, Woodrow Wilson, and Getty Foundations. She also serves as Associate Director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, where she edits Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. She founded and edits Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (UC Press) with associate editor Emily Engel, the first academic journal in these fields. Currently, she is one of four PIs of the $1.03 million “Critical Mission Studies at California’s Crossroads,” funded by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives for 2019–21. Her upbringing as a working class, Catholic Chicana from Arizona forged her identity as a border-crossing art historian and inspirational teacher. The topics of her publications range from the early modern Spanish empire to contemporary Chicanx art.

Richard The is a designer, artist and educator. His work, ranging from graphic design to installations to user interfaces, investigates the aesthetic and cultural implications of an increasingly technology-driven society. After studying at University of the Arts Berlin and the MIT Media Lab he worked at Sagmeister Inc., led a design group at the Google Creative Lab and is co-founder of the transdisciplinary design studio TheGreenEyl. He is an Assistant Professor of Art Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design. His work has been recognized by international design institutions such as D&AD, Art Directors Club New York, AIGA, Communication Arts, Type Director’s Club Tokyo and Ars Electronica, Linz and he has taught at NYU ITP, School of Visual Arts and MIT School of Architecture.

Beverly Fishman is an internationally recognized painter and sculptor who adopts the language of abstraction to explore the body, issues of identity, and contemporary culture. For more than three decades, she has used imagery drawn from science, medicine, and the pharmaceutical industry to promote inquiry into the effects of these institutions on both individuals and societies. Ms. Fishman holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Philadelphia College of Art, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University. For 25 years she was the Head of the Painting Department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and she has held positions at Maryland Institute College of Art, and the College of New Rochelle, Graduate Art School. Fishman has been the recipient of many awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award; an Artist Space Exhibition Grant; an NEA Fellowship; and an Anonymous Was A Woman Award. Her work is included in many public and private collections around the world.

The University of Houston School of Art is a collection of impressive resources—both human and material—focused on creating and sustaining the intellectual, emotional and physical environments necessary to cultivate young artists, designers, theorists, critics and art historians.

The School of Art faculty is comprised of 26 full-time members and prestigious visiting instructors who are practicing professionals well known in their respective fields. School of Art faculty have received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Getty Foundation, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies,  the Andy Warhol Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy in Rome, the Fulbright Foundation and many others. Faculty have exhibited their works in major museums and galleries around the world, and in important exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial, São Paulo Art Biennial, and Venice Biennale.

Houston (our extended campus) is the fourth largest city in the country and third largest visual arts center outside of New York and Los Angeles. It is a city with world-class cultural institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Menil Collection and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

The University of Houston, founded in 1927, is the most ethnically diverse research university in the nation and the leading urban teaching and research institution in Texas.