Each year Pratt Fine Arts invites contemporary artists for a public lecture and to conduct studio visits with fine arts graduate students. This Visiting Artists Lecture Series (VALS) is coordinated by graduate student leaders. The aim is to provide our students with exposure to a wide array of artists working in a variety of fields at various stages in their careers. Recent and past visiting artists include: Abigail D. Deville, Edgar Heap of Birds, Jennie Jieun Lee, Shazia Sikander, Elektra KB, Nina Katchadourian, Wardell Milan, Wendy Red Star, Narcissister, Pradeep Dalal, James Hyde, Jill Magid, Schezerade Garcia, Rochelle Feinstein, Lavar Munroe, Lorna Simpson, Rico Gatson, Nicole Eisenman, Tom Sachs, Aura Satz, Leigh Ledare, Judith Bernstein, Dan Walsh, Kalup Linzey, Keltie Ferris, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Diana Al-Hadid, Rashaad Newsome, Dora + Maja, Bryan Zanisnik, Nancy Grossman, Peter Saul, Michael Berryhill, Wafaa Bilal, and Catherine Opie.

Pratt’s Fine Arts Department Visiting Artists Lecture Series was made possible by a generous grant from the Robert Lehman Foundation.

About the Artist

Jeffrey Gibson’s multimedia practice synthesizes the cultural and artistic traditions of his Cherokee and Choctaw heritage with the visual languages of Modernism and themes from contemporary popular and queer culture. His work is a vibrant call for queer and Indigenous empowerment, envisioning a celebration of strength and joy within these communities.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado Springs, CO) grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, Korea, and England. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and a Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. He is a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Bard College and lives and works near Hudson, New York.

Recent solo exhibitions also include Infinite Indigenous Queer Love at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA (2021); When Fire Is Applied to Stone It Cracks at Brooklyn Museum (2020); Time Carriers at Esker Foundation, Calgary (2019); and The Anthropophagic Effect at New Museum, New York (2019). Jeffrey Gibson’s first survey exhibition, LIKE A HAMMER, was curated by John Lukavic for the Denver Museum of Art where it premiered in 2018. The exhibition traveled to the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS; Seattle Museum of Art, WA; and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI. Gibson’s work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

Gibson’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Denver Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.; National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR; among many others. Gibson is a recipient of numerous awards, notably a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2019); Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters and Sculptors Award (2015); and Creative Capital Foundation Grant (2005).

Time: 6:00 PM EST

Free!

Registration