Symposia, Special Lecturers, Studio Visits

Elina  Staikou

Elina Staikou

2023

Associate Lecturer in Modern Liberal Arts at Winchester University, Elina Staikou is the author of Deconstruction at Home: Metaphors of Travel and Writing and of articles on contemporary philosophy, literature and biomedicine. She participated in the IDSVA Athens symposium with a talk on migration and hospitality.

Andreas Weber

Andreas Weber

2023

Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher and non-fiction writer. His work deals with a re-evaluation of reality as alife, subjective, and deeply shared. He teaches ecophilosophy at the Berlin University of the Arts and is adjunct professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. His latest books are Enlivenment. Toward a Poetics of the Anthropocene (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019) and Sharing Life. An Ecopolitics of Reciprocity (New Delhi & Berlin, 2020).

Webinar: Culture as Reciprocity. Towards Ecological Citizenship.

Nephi Craig

Nephi Craig

2023

Chef Nephi Craig has 24 years of culinary experience in America and around the world in London, Germany, Brazil, and Japan. He is an enrolled member of the White Mountain Apache Tribe and half Navajo. Chef Craig is also the founder of the Native American Culinary Association or NACA, an organization/network that is dedicated to the research, refinement, and development of Native American Cuisine.

View Webinar: "Nephi Craig: Landscape is Destiny"

Piripi Kingi Waretini

Piripi Kingi Waretini

2023

Piripi Kingi Waretini (Waikato Maniapoto tribal confederation) is a certified translator with Te TauraWhiri i te Reo Māori (Māori Language Commission) whose translation work ranges from complex legal documentation and Pushkin’s poetry in iambic tetrameter to several movie scripts. Piripi is a poet, writer and musical composer and amongst other things was the former Wellington Chair of Ngā Puna Waihanga (NZMāori Artists and Writers).

View webinar "An Introduction to Māori Culture: A Talk by Piripi Kingi Waretini"

Nina Papazoglou

Nina Papazoglou

2023

Papazoglou studied Cultural History at Goldsmiths’ College (PhD). Her research is centered on the non-autonomous character of contemporary artistic values and the way these inform economic and cultural capital and the context of art history.

Magali Lara

Magali Lara

2023

Mexican artist, Magali Lara works in a variety of mediums, including painting, collage, artist's books, and installation. Lara studied at the Universidad de Guadalajara (BA 2008) and Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (MFA 2011). Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca.

Karen Cordero

Karen Cordero

2023

Karen Cordero Reiman is an art historian, curator and writer. She has participated in numerous conferences and as a visiting lecturer at universities, museums and cultural events all over the world. Recent publications include: “Intervenciones suaves: complicidades entre arte y medios textiles” in Ana Paula Simioni, ed., Transbordar: transgressões do bordado na arte. São Paulo, Brazil, SESC, 2020; Anita Brenner: Luz de la modernidad (with Pablo Ortiz Monasterio), Mexico: Museo Nacional de Arte and Arte & Cultura Grupo Salinas, 2020, and many more.

Carmen Boullosa

Carmen Boullosa

2022

Carmen Boullosa (born September 4, 1954 in Mexico City, Mexico) is a Mexican poet, novelist and playwright. Her work focuses on the issues of feminism and gender roles within a Latin American context. Boullosa has published eighteen novels and several poems.

Mel Edwards

Mel Edwards

2022

Melvin Edwards is a pioneer in the history of contemporary African American art and sculpture. In 1970 he became the first African American sculptor to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mel Edwards received an honorary doctorate from IDSVA in 2022.

Webinar: The Question of Africanness Part 2 with Mel Edwards and Curlee Holton.

Johan Thom

Johan Thom

2022

Johan Thom lives and works in Pretoria as a visual artist and a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the Department of Visual Art, University of Pretoria. Thom works across a variety of media including sculpture, video, performance, drawing, printmaking and photography. He is also an active artist-curator who regularly engages with the question of art-as-research,conceptually driven art and the body.

Webinar: The Question of 'Africanness' and the Expanded Field of Sculpture (Part 1)

Olu Oguibe

Olu Oguibe

2022

Olu Oguibe is an artist, author and curator. Oguibe a seminal figure in contemporary (African) artistic practice with artistic, curatorial, and theoretic outputs that include exhibitions as part of the Venice, Johannesburg, and Havana Biennales, Documenta in Kassel, Sonsbeek and numerous others; the curation of major national and international exhibitions and projects; and the authoring of key texts in relation to the study and dissemination of contemporary African art.

Webinar: The Question of 'Africanness' and the Expanded Field of Sculpture (Part 1)

Giovanbattista Tusa

Giovanbattista Tusa

2021

Philosopher, documentary filmmaker, and video artist Giovanbattista Tusa is currently a Researcher in Philosophy and Ecology at the Universidade Nova of Lisbon. A Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy and Critical Theory in many institutions in Europe and the US, he is the co-author of De la Fin (Mimésis Visages, 2017), with Alain Badiou.

Daphné Le Sergent

Daphné Le Sergent

2021

Born in 1975 in Seoul (South Korea), Le Sergent lives in Paris and carries out artistic and theoretical research into the notions of separation or “schize,”with reference both to geopolitical boundaries and potential internal disjunction. She holds a Ph.D. in Aesthetic, Sciences and Technology of Arts.

Natalie Loveless

Natalie Loveless

2021

Natalie Loveless is an artist, theorist, curator. She is Associate Professor of contemporary art and theory in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the University of Alberta, located in ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan) on Treaty Six territory (Canada). Her recent books are, How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation (Duke University Press, 2019) and Knowings and Knots: Methodologies and Ecologies in Research-Creation (University of Alberta Press, 2019).

Aga Ouisseinov

Aga Ouisseinov

2021

International sculptor and and installation artist, Aga Ousseinov, investigates the interaction between individual and cultural narrative structures. His work in particular suggest two self-conscious and conflicting visions of the world: one that is rational and technological, which contrasts another: poetic, imaginary and emotional. Pushing forward established traditions of sculpture, his works are sculptural installations combined with videos, photographs, drawings and collages. Ousseinov's work has be exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally.

Iñaki Bonillas

Iñaki Bonillas

2020

Iñaki Bonillas (born 1981 in Mexico City) is an artist living and working in Mexico City. His recent work is based on the photographic archive of his grandfather J.R. Plaza and family. In 2007 he participated in a group exhibition at Claremont Museum of Art.

Jill Moser

Jill Moser

2020

Jill Moser's work explores the intersections of painting, writing, and the animated image. Her paintings, drawings, prints, and artist's books have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, and featured in prominent collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The National Gallery of Art, The Yale University Art Gallery, The Fogg Art Museum, and The National Library of France.

Alberto Hernandez-Lemus

Alberto Hernandez-Lemus

2020

Alberto Hernandez-Lemus is an associate professor of Philosophy at Colorado College. He started his career in philosophy in aesthetics, writing on the cinema theory of Gilles Deleuze. He has gradually come to focus on social and political philosophy, particularly on philosophical issues pertaining to contemporary social movements in the global South.


Nausikaä El-Mecky

Nausikaä El-Mecky

2019

Art historian and cultural theorist, Nausikaä El-Mecky specializes in attacks and censorship of art, from the earliest images until today. She is tenure track professor in art history and visual culture at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.


Curlee Raven Holton

Curlee Raven Holton

2018

Long known as a leading Master Printmaker, Professor Holton has exhibited his work throughout the world, and his paintings, drawings, and prints are held major museums and collections in the U.S. and abroad. His most recent solo exhibition, Journey: The Artistry of Curlee Raven Holton, was held at the University of Maryland University College.

Vadim Zakharov

Vadim Zakharov

2018

Vadim Zakharov is an artist, editor, archivist of the Moscow Conceptual art scene. Since 2016 he organized exhibition space “FREEHOME-Artist to Artist” in Berlin. He lives and works in Berlin.


Alison Hildreth

Alison Hildreth

2017

Leading Maine painter, printmaker, and installation artist Alison Hildreth shows at the June Fitzpatrick Gallery in Portland, Maine. Her works are collected in the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, Wellesley College, Smith College, and the Boston Public Library.

Hank Willis Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas

2017

A photo conceptual artist who has exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad. His work is in numerous public collections including The Museum of Modern Art New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The High Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Ewa Ziarek

Ewa Ziarek

2016

Ewa Ziarek is Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature and Founder and Director of Humanities Institute, SUNY Buffalo, and author of An Ethics of Dissensus.

Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt

2016

Probably best known for his contribution to the development of New Historicism, Stephen Greenblatt is John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University. A world leading Renaissance scholar, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his recently published, The Swerve: How the World Become Modern.

Ted Coons

Ted Coons

2016

Ted Coons is Professor of Psychology, Cognition & Perception at the Center for Neural Science at New York University (NYU), arriving there in 1965. He is a pioneer in the field of neuroscience and a major contributor to early studies in neuroaesthetics. As an undergraduate, he studied music composition and theory at Colorado College (B.A., 1951) and then—after a stint in the Air Force—again at Yale University (toward an M.A.).  There, however, he became interested in what impact the temporal form of a composition has on the feelings of an audience. He soon switched his career goals and ultimately received his Ph.D. in what is now known as systems neuroscience.

Deborah Willis

Deborah Willis

2016

Deborah Willis is a contemporary African-American artist, photographer, curator, photographic historian, and author. She is University Professor and Chair of Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, as well as the 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award. She received her PhD from George Mason University and her MFA from Pratt Institute.

Nancy Princenthal

Nancy Princenthal

2016

Princenthal is the former Editor-in-Chief of Art in America and author of the acclaimed Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art.

William D. "Bro" Adams

William D. "Bro" Adams

2016

Adams is an American educator and advocate for the humanities. He was the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2014-2017.

Alfredo Jaar

Alfredo Jaar

2015

World-renowned artist, architect and filmmaker. His work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York, the MCA in Chicago, MOCA and LACMA in Los Angeles, the Tate in London, the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris and dozens of other institutions and private collections worldwide.

Robert Whitman

Robert Whitman

2015

Robert Whitman was a leading figure in New York’s Happenings movement from the late 1950s through the early 1960s. A pioneer of performance art and multimedia installation, he co-founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a nonprofit organization dedicated to collaboration between artists and engineers. Throughout his career, Whitman has aspired to transform and transcend the limitations of images by emphasizing their spatial, temporal, and dimensional qualities.

Mari Spirito

Mari Spirito

2015

Founding Director of Protocinema, mission driven art organization realizing site-aware exhibitions around the world; based in New York and Istanbul.

Giovanna Borradori

Giovanna Borradori

2015

Giovanna Borradori holds advanced degrees from the University of Milan, Italy (“Dottore in Filosofia”) and the University of Paris, France (“Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondis”). She specializes in European philosophy of the 19th and 20th century. In recent years, her research has been focusing on the aesthetics of architecture and the philosophy of terrorism. She is the editor of Recoding Metaphysics: The New Italian Philosophy (Northwestern University Press, 1988) and the author of two books in English: The American Philosopher (University of Chicago Press 1993) and Philosophy in a Time of Terror. Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (University of Chicago Press, 2003), a “philosophy best-seller” translated into eighteen languages.

Julie Martin

Julie Martin

2015

Julie Martin has been an active figure in the New York art community since the 1960s. She joined the staff of E.A.T., founded by Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman, Billy Klüver, and fellow Bell Labs engineer Fred Waldhauer, as editor of the newsletter and continued to work closely with Klüver on the great variety of projects that E.A.T. carried out from 1966 to the present.

Holly Block †

Holly Block †

2014

Late curator and critic Holly Block was former Executive Director of The Bronx Museum of the Arts. Among her many innovations and achievements at the Bronx Museum, she guided its management of smARTpower, an international fellowship program for U.S. artists supported by the U.S. Department of State. She is the author of Art Cuba: The New Generation, and the co-commissioner of the United States Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennial, featuring artist Sarah Sze.

Eric Kandel

Eric Kandel

2013

Eric Kandel won the Nobel Prize in physiology in 2003. He is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His most recent book is The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain.

Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu

2013

Julie Mehretu is one of the world’s preeminent contemporary artists. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005.

Mildred Glimcher

Mildred Glimcher

2013

Mildred founded the Pace Gallery on Newbury Street in Boston in 1960 while still in college. Since then, Ms. Glimcher has curated exhibitions and written books and articles about “Happenings,” Jean Dubuffet, Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder, Lucas Samaras, and art in post-war Paris, among other subjects. Ms. Glimcher has a BA in art history from Wellesley College and an MA/ABD from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. She was the editor of Adventures in Art: 40 Years at Pace, a monumental work documenting all the exhibitions at the Pace Gallery from 1960 to 2000.

Susan Stewart

Susan Stewart

2013

Susan Stewart is Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities and director of the Society of Fellows, Princeton University. A leading American poet and philosopher, her recent books include The Poet’s Freedom and The Open Studio.

Hal Foster

Hal Foster

2013

Hal Foster is Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Books include Compulsive Beauty; Prosthetic Gods; and The Art-Architecture Complex.

Koji Inoue

Koji Inoue

2013

Koji Inoue is Vice President for Post World War II and Contemporary Art at Christie's.


Michael Findlay

Michael Findlay

2013

Michael Findlay’s book on The Value of Art explains to the initiated and the un-initiated why and how paintings come by their prices. Findlay is a New York art dealer whose career spans the range of the art market from Madison Avenue to Soho in the late 60s and early 70s to Christie’s at the height of the Japanese art boom to the depths of 1990s art recession and, finally, more than a decade at Acquavella Galleries as the super dealers have come to dominate the top end of the market and host museum quality shows to rival their academic cousins.

Veronique  Chagnon-Burke

Veronique Chagnon-Burke

2013

Veronique Chagnon-Burke is an Associate Professor and Academic Director at Christie’s Education New York.

Franz Ackermann

Franz Ackermann

2012

Franz Ackermann is a contemporary German artist best known for his psychedelic paintings and installations.

Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley

2011

Simon Critchley is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. His work engages in many areas: continental philosophy, philosophy and literature, psychoanalysis, ethics, and political theory, among others. His most recent books include The Problem with Levinas and ABC of Impossibility.

Liam  Gillick

Liam Gillick

2010

Gillick is a British artist who lives and works in New York City. Gillick deploys multiple forms to make visible the aesthetics of the constructed world and examine the ideological control systems that have emerged along with globalization and neoliberalism.

Robert E.  Steele

Robert E. Steele

2010

Former Executive Director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park.

James Carpenter

James Carpenter

2009

James Carpenter, New York artist and architect whose projects include the glass exterior of the recently completed Tower Number Seven, World Trade Center.

Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson

2009

Fred Wilson is an American artist. Wilson received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 1999 and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 2003. Wilson represented the United States at the Biennial Cairo in 1992 and the Venice Biennale in 2003.

Paul Bloodgood †

Paul Bloodgood †

2008

Bloodgood was an artist and gallery owner. He co-founded the AC Project Room in Lower Manhattan, and held solo exhibitions in several US cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C., and at the Andreas Binder Gallery in Germany. His group exhibitions included shows at the Saatchi Gallery in London. He was a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.

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