Spring 2025 visiting artists lectures

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.

Wafaa Bilal and Bana Kattan in Conversation
Tuesday, February 4, 6–7:30pm 
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

Join internationally renowned artist Wafaa Bilal (MFA 2003) and Bana Kattan (MA 2011), curator and associate head of exhibitions at Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, for a conversation about the artist’s first major survey, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago February 1-October 19. Presented in partnership with the MCA Chicago. 

Edra Soto: Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series
Tuesday, February 18, 6–7:30pm 
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

Edra Soto (MFA 2000) is a Puerto Rican–born artist, educator, and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Presented in partnership with SAIC Alumni Engagement.

Emeka Ogboh
Tuesday, March 11, 6–7:30pm 
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

Emeka Ogboh is an artist whose practice engages places through a multisensory approach, incorporating sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. His installations and culinary projects weave sensory elements into transformative experiences, reinterpreting private, public, and collective memories. Presented in partnership with Goethe-Institut Chicago and SAIC’s Department of Art and Technology / Sound Practices.

Trinh T. Minh-ha
Tuesday, March 25, 6–7:30pm 
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

Trinh T. Minh-ha is a world-renowned filmmaker, writer, composer, and Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work includes nine feature-length films and has been honored in 69 retrospectives along with several large-scale multimedia installations. Her latest film, What About China?, will screen at the Gene Siskel Film Center March 26. Visit saic.edu/cate for details. Co-presented with SAIC’s Conversations at the Edge; additional support provided by the Penny Stamps Speaker Series at the University of Michigan.

adrienne maree brown
Thursday, April 3, 12:30–1:30pm 
Visit here to join via Zoom.

adrienne maree brown is the New York Times–bestselling author/editor of several published texts, a ritual singer-songwriter, co-generator of the Lineages of Change Tarot Deck, and co-creator/host of the “How to Survive the End of the World” podcast with Autumn Brown. Their latest book Loving Corrections is now available. Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on the occasion of SAIC’s Shared Read, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha.  

Otobong Nkanga
Tuesday, April 8, 6–7:30pm 
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

Otobong Nkanga’s multidisciplinary practice examines the complex social, political, ecological, and material relationships between bodies, territories, minerals, and the earth. Through drawing, installation, performance, photography, textiles, and sculpture, she creates pathways translating the natural world into networked, aggregated situations.

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 U.S. 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.