Winter/spring public programming 2025

Established in 1940 as a not-for-profit organization that supports the Art Institute of Chicago, the Society for Contemporary Art (SCA) promotes a deeper understanding and appreciation of the art of the current moment. SCA programs and events offer this insight to participants through accessing artists, leading critics, historians, curators, dealers, distinguished private collections, and major art destinations within the United States and abroad. The SCA also has made a substantial contribution to the museum’s collection and presentations of contemporary art through its acquisitions, special initiatives, and exhibition support.

We invite you to join us for the 2025 Winter/Spring Public Programming series featuring Judith Geichman, Adriano Pedrosa, Jason Moran, and Veronica Ryan. To register for a free lecture or to learn more about the SCA membership program, check out our website at scaaic.org!

Judith Geichman 
Wednesday, January 22, 6pm
Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago

Judith Geichman’s process is driven by a relentless exploration of painting’s possibilities through abstraction. Her ever-shifting and rigorous approach is at times contemplative and cautious, and at others, aggressive and reckless. She embraces risk and uncertainty, paying equal attention to the constructive and destructive, as her paintings are generated through a sequence of formal and material instigations and responses.

Judith Geichman (b.1944), lives and works in Chicago. She attended Ohio State University and received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Geichman’s work has been exhibited at the Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; 65 Grand, Chicago; MCA Chicago; University Club of Chicago; Regards, Chicago; Julius Caesar, Chicago; The Spertus Museum, Chicago; State of Illinois Museum, Springfield, IL; Rockford Art Museum; and the Chicago Cultural Center among others. Geichman is the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award, 2023; two Visual Artists Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts; The Margaret Klimek Phillips Grant; and the Edward L. Ryerson Traveling Fellowship, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Residencies include AIRArtist In Residence Lower Austria, Krems, Austria; the Dora Maar House, Dora Maar Cultural Center, Menerbes, France; The American Academy in Rome, visiting artist; and the Gilfelag Residency, Akureyri, Iceland. Recent acquisitions include the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the University Club of Chicago.

Adriano Pedrosa
To be announced
Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago
Sponsored by Eric Ceputis and David W. Williams

Adriano Pedrosa will join us to speak about his curatorial practice, including past exhibitions in São Paulo, both at Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and elsewhere, that informed his project for the Biennale Arte 2024. Those include but are not limited to, the 24th Bienal de São Paulo in 1998, the 31st Panorama da Arte Brasileira-Mamõyaguara opá mamõ pupé in 2009, and the ongoing series at MASP devoted to different Histórias: Histories of Childhood (2016), Histories of Sexuality (2017), Afro Atlantic Histories (2018), Women’s Histories, Feminist Histories (2019), Histories of Dance (2020), Brazilian Histories (2022), Indigenous Histories (2023), and Queer Histories.

Adriano Pedrosa (b.1965) has been the artistic director of Museu de Arte de São Paulo since 2014. He was adjunct curator of the 24th Bienal de São Paulo (1998), co-curator of the 27th Bienal de São Paulo (2006), curator of InSite_05 (San Diego, Tijuana, 2005), artistic director of the 2nd Trienal de San Juan (2009), and curator of 31st Panorama da Arte Brasileira-Mamõyaguara opá mamõ pupé (Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, 2009). In 2023, he received the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from Bard College. This year Pedrosa became the first Latin American curator of the Biennale Arte, in Venice.

Jason Moran
Friday, April 18, 6pm
Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago
Sponsored by Guy-Karim and María Christina Caland Puymartin

Jazz pianist, composer, and performance artist Jason Moran is deeply invested in reassessing and complicating the relationship between music and language. His extensive efforts in composition, improvisation, and performance are all geared towards challenging the status quo while respecting the accomplishments of his predecessors. Moran’s partnerships and music-making with venerated and iconic visual artists is extensive. He has performed and recorded with jazz masters and his work with his trio, The Bandwagon, has resulted in a profound discography.

Jason Moran (b.1975) earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. Moran was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022. He is the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center and Curator at the Park Avenue Armory. Moran currently teaches at the New England Conservatory. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include, Jason Moran: Black Stars: Writing in the Dark, Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA (2022-2024), Bathing the Room with Blues, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2021-22), and Jason Moran, Walker Art Center, Minneapolisi (2018), which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and Soft Power at San Francisco Museum of Fine Art. In 2023, Moran curated the inaugural permanent exhibition, Here To Stay, at The Louis Armstrong Center in Queens, NY.

Veronica Ryan 
Wednesday, May 21, 6pm
Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago

Born in Plymouth, Montserrat and raised in England, Veronica Ryan OBE, RA creates meticulously handcrafted work using a wide range of materials, including bronze, plaster, marble, textile, and found objects. Her sculptures and installations examine environmental concerns, personal narratives and memories, as well as the wider psychological implications of history, trauma and recovery. 

Veronica Ryan (b.1956) has studied at St. Albans College of Art and Design, Bath Academy of Art in Corsham Court, The Slade School of Art at University College, London, and The School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. Over her forty-year career, she has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and residencies within the U.K., the U.S., and abroad. Her first one-person exhibition was at Arnolfini, Bristol in 1987. Other important one-person shows have been presented at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (1988), Camden Arts Centre (1995), Aldrich Museum (1996), Salena Gallery, Brooklyn (2005), Tate St Ives (2000, 2005 and 2017), The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2011), and The Art House, Wakefield, Yorkshire, England (2017). In 2022, Ryan was included in the Whitney Biennial and awarded the Turner Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for visual arts in the United Kingdom. Ryan will have a one-person exhibition at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation (March 2024) which will travel to the Wexner Center for the Arts (August 2025). Her work is in many private and public collections such as the Tate Collection, the Brooklyn Museum, the Arts Council Collection, Contemporary Art Society, Sainsbury’s Collection, the Hepworth Wakefield, and the Weltkunst Collection at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.