School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) Visiting Artists Program

10/12/2026

Ronald Rael Lecture

✨Monday, October 19, 6:00–7:30 p.m.

📍The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation
services.

Join us for a lecture by architect Ronald Rael followed by an audience Q&A.

Ronald Rael is a trained architect, artist, activist, design technologist, multi-generational rancher, and traditional builder. His work blurs the borders between architecture, art, technology, land-based practices, and social justice, often combining indigenous and traditional materials and processes with contemporary technologies to explore the contrasts, contradictions, and complexities of contemporary society. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and other major museums. He is the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

Presented in partnership with the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lecture
Series in SAIC’s Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed
Objects.

10/02/2026

Join us Monday, October 19 for a free public lecture by architect Ronald Rael!

🗓 October 19, 6:00-7:30pm
📍Fullerton Hall, The Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave
💫 Free and all welcome, bring a friend!

Ronald Rael is a trained architect, artist, activist, design technologist, multi-generational rancher, and traditional builder. His work blurs the borders between architecture, art, technology, land-based practices, and social justice. He writes books, forms startup companies, advocates for human rights at the US-Mexico border, creates software, invents novel materials and new forms of construction, and designs buildings as an applied research enterprise. His work often combines indigenous and traditional materials and processes with contemporary technologies to speak to the contrasts, contradictions, and complexities of othered subjects, ranging from people to materials and places, in contemporary society. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The London Design Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Renwick Smithsonian American Art Museum. He has served as the chair of the departments of Architecture and Art Practice and is the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture at the University of California Berkeley.

Currently on view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is “Rael San Fratello: Prototypes and Provocations”, the most comprehensive presentation to date of the award-winning work of Oakland-based architecture and design studio Rael San Fratello.

Presented in partnership with the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lecture Series in SAIC’s Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects.

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and hearing assisted devices are available. For additional access requests, visit saic.edu/access

Photo: Ronald Rael. Photo by Eliott Ross

09/21/2026

Join us, Monday 28th September for a free public lecture by Hamza Walker

🗓️ Monday, September 28, 6:00–7:30 p.m.

📍The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

✨Free and all welcome, bring a friend!

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.

Join us for a lecture by curator Hamza Walker followed by an audience Q&A. Hamza Walker is director of The Brick (formerly LAXART), a non-profit alternative art space in Los Angeles. Walker has been chasing the same high for over three decades. Ever since seeing avant-garde concerts and performances in late 80s Chicago, he has felt compelled to share a boundless curiosity about art. In the ensuing years, Walker has curated dozens of exhibitions ranging from solo to thematic exhibitions, from the production of new work to career surveys. Recent exhibitions include MONUMENTS, co-curated with Bennett Simpson and Kara Walker, and co-organized with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2025/2026; Gregg Bordowitz, This Is Not A Love Song, 2025; Betsy Paige Smith, Unshade Me Of You, 2025; Nikita Gale, Takers, 2022; Ari Marcopoulos and Joe McPhee, Alone Together, 2021; Kandis Williams/Cassandra Press’ The Absolute Right to Exclude, 2021; and Postcommodity’s Some Reach While Others Clap, 2020.

Established in 2006 by a generous gift from Bill and Stephanie Sick, this distinguished visiting
professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC.

09/16/2026

Hamza Walker: Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Monday, September 28, 6:00–7:30 p.m.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.

Join us for a lecture by curator Hamza Walker followed by an audience Q&A.

Hamza Walker is director of The Brick (formerly LAXART), a non-profit alternative art space in Los Angeles. Walker has been chasing the same high for over three decades. Ever since seeing avant-garde concerts and performances in late 80s Chicago, he has felt compelled to share a boundless curiosity about art. In the ensuing years, Walker has curated dozens of exhibitions ranging from solo to thematic exhibitions, from the production of new work to career surveys. Recent exhibitions include MONUMENTS, co-curated with Bennett Simpson and Kara Walker, and co-organized with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2025/2026; Gregg Bordowitz, This Is Not A Love Song, 2025; Betsy Paige Smith, Unshade Me Of You, 2025; Nikita Gale, Takers, 2022; Ari Marcopoulos and Joe McPhee, Alone Together, 2021; Kandis Williams/Cassandra Press’ The Absolute Right to Exclude, 2021; and Postcommodity’s Some Reach While Others Clap, 2020.

Established in 2006 by a generous gift from Bill and Stephanie Sick, this distinguished visiting professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC.

09/14/2026

TONIGHT!

Join us for a lecture by artist Catherine Opie followed by an audience Q&A.

📍Location: The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave. (doors open 5:45pm)

✨This event is free, non-ticketed and open to the general public.

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. For additional access requests, visit saic.edu/access

For more than 30 years, Catherine Opie has captured often overlooked aspects of contemporary American life and culture. One of the most important photographers of her generation, her photographic subjects have included early seminal portraits of the LGBTQ+ community, the architecture of Los Angeles' freeway system, mansions in Beverly Hills, Midwestern icehouses, high school football players, California surfers, abstract landscapes of National Parks, and the Bel-Air residence of Elizabeth Taylor, among others. In 2018 Opie debuted her first film, The Modernist, a dystopic view of Los Angeles, a city that has figured prominently in her work over the years. Her complex and diverse body of work is political, personal, and highly aesthetic—the formal, conceptual, and documentary are always at play.

Learn more at saic.edu/vap

Catherine Opie, Untitled #2 (Swamps), 2019, Pigment print, artwork dimensions: 40 x 60 inches, framed dimensions: 41 x 61 x 2 inches. © Catherine Opie, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul See less

09/09/2026

We kick-off our fall season next Monday, September 14, 6:00pm with a lecture by renowned artist Catherine Opie! Free and open to the public. Join us and bring a friend!

Catherine Opie is one of the most important photographers of her generation whose work examines overlooked aspects of contemporary American life and culture through portraits, landscapes, architectural subjects, and film that are political, personal, and highly aesthetic.

📅 Monday, September 14, 6:00-7:30pm
📍Fullerton Hall, The Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave. Doors open at 5:45pm.
✨FREE, registration is not required.

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and hearing assisted devices are available. For additional access requests, visit saic.edu/access

Catherine Opie, 2025, photo by Heather Rasmussen. © Catherine Opie, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul

08/25/2026

Mark your calendars for the Visiting Artists Program's Fall 2026 season!

This fall, we welcome an exciting lineup of artists, designers, and thinkers to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Join us for free, public talks by Catherine Opie, Hamza Walker, Ronald Rael, McKenzie Wark, and Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. Be a part of one of Chicago's leading public forums focused on contemporary art, design, and scholarship.

Learn more: saic.edu/vap

05/08/2026

That's a wrap on another incredible year of the Visiting Artists Program!

Thank you to all of the amazing artists, designers, and scholars who joined us this season. Your generosity, insight, and conversations made a lasting impact on our students and community.

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Mark Pascale

Lee Mingwei
Jennifer Packer






We're so grateful to everyone who attended and supported VAP this year, and we can't wait to welcome more inspiring voices next season!

Special thanks to our incredible campus and community partners for their collaboration and support throughout the year.

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1. Lee Mingwei: Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture
2. Audience Q&A
3. Cecilia Vicuña with students
4. JJJJJerome Ellis performance
5. Student walkthrough of Collection in Conversation with Pablo Helguera at the MCA Chicago

05/05/2026

TONIGHT!

Join us for a lecture by artist Haegue Yang!

🗓May 5, 6:00-7:30pm
📍Fullerton Hall, The Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave
✨Free and all welcome

Haegue Yang is a prolific artist known for her versatile works ranging from room-scaled installations and performative sculptures, to paper collages and staged performances. Her multisensory environments activate perception beyond the visual, creating immersive experiences that treat issues such as labor, migration, and displacement from the oblique vantage of the aesthetic.

Image: Haegue Yang, Approaching: Choreography Engineered in Never-Past Tense, 2012, dOCUMENTA (13). Photo: Nils Klinger

05/01/2026

Haegue Yang: Leap Year, Hayward Gallery London, October 9, 2024 - January 5 2025

Leap Year is the fist major survey of Haegue Yang in the UK. It presented a comprehensive study of Yang's work from the early 2000s to today, highlighting how her artworks resonate on a personal and sensory level while also speaking to social, political, and spiritual ideas.

Yang (born 1971, Seoul) lives and works in both Berlin and Seoul. Her multisensory environments encourage perception beyond the visual, creating immersive experiences that highlight issues such as labor, migration, and displacement.

Learn more about the exhibition from Hayward Gallery senior curator Yung Ma.

529 likes, 5 comments. "Explore the works of Haegue Yang with Leap Year curator Yung Ma"