Raven Chacon: 2023–24 Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) welcomes Raven Chacon as the 2023–24 Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor. 

Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, and a member of Postcommodity from 2009 to 2018, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; San Francisco Electronic Music Festival; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Vancouver Art Gallery; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Borealis Festival, Seattle; SITE Santa Fe; Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; Ende Tymes Festival, New York; The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC; Whitney Biennial, New York; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; Carnegie International, and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. 

A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on more than 80 releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from The LA Times, the New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named the 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.

Since 2004, he has mentored more than 300 Native high school composers in writing new string quartets for the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital Award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022), and the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022).

As SAIC’s 2023–24 Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor, Chacon will present a free public lecture through SAIC’s Visiting Artists Program on October 17 at 6pm CT in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Details may be found by visiting here. In the spring, Chacon will be engaged with a graduate seminar in Sound, taught by Whitney Johnson, Assistant Professor, Adjunct. 

Established in 2006 by a generous gift from Bill and Stephanie Sick of Winnetka, Illinois, the Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC. Previous Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professors include Bruce Mau, Jaume Plensa, Bill Fontana, Catherine Opie, Andrea Zittel, Theaster Gates, Chris Ware, Ann Hamilton, Laura Owens, Amanda Williams, Nayland Blake, Ebony G. Patterson, Shirin Neshat, and most recently, Walter Hood.

About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For more than 150 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. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alums and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, Jeff Koons, and LeRoy Neiman. For more information, please visit saic.edu.