The School of Art’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series brings highly acclaimed international artists, writers, and critics to the school throughout the year. Each lecture is free and open to the public.
Sharmistha Ray
2025/26
Sharmistha Ray
Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 5:30pm, Kresge Theatre
Sharmistha Ray’s art practice delves into the complex inheritance of multiple cultures through the lens of their queer identity, immigration, and modes of abstraction, both Western and non-Western. Working primarily in painting and drawing, they also engage in sculpture, installation, curation, criticism, and pedagogy. In addition to their solo work, they co-founded, with artist Dannielle Tegeder, the feminist art collective Hilma’s Ghost, a collaborative model for research, artistic production, pedagogy, and community.
ICA Pittsburgh Symposium
“How Can We Remake The Museum? An Opening Conversation”
Tuesday, September 30, 2025, 5:30pm, Carnegie Museum of Art Theatre
In preparation for the 2027 public opening of its dedicated home in the new Richard King Mellon Hall of Science, ICA Pittsburgh is undertaking a multi-phase creative research project to examine the role of contemporary arts institutions in light of shifting cultural, political, and social landscapes. This public symposium marks an important milestone in this ongoing research: an opportunity to open the process and share findings from an initial series of roundtable discussions and connect with key stakeholders and members of the Pittsburgh cultural community.
Everest Pipkin
Tuesday, October 21, 2025, 5:30pm, Kresge Theatre
Everest Pipkin is a game developer, artist, and educator who works in games and software tools across the handmade web–as well as on paper through books, zines and drawings. They have shown and spoken at The Design Museum of London, The Texas Biennial, The XXI Triennale of Milan, The Photographers Gallery of London, Center for Land Use Interpretation, and currently teach game design at the Pratt Institute. They believe the internet is a public good, and the post office should operate it.
Claire Bishop
Orville M. Winsand Lecture for Critical Studies in Art
Tuesday, January 27, 2026, 5:30pm, Kresge Theatre
Claire Bishop is an art critic and Presidential Professor in the PhD Program in Art History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Some of her books include Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso, 2012, winner of the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism), a book of conversations with the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera (Cisneros, 2020), and Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today (Verso, 2024, shortlisted for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award). She is a a Contributing Editor of Artforum, a Guggenheim Fellow (2024), and her essays and books have been translated into twenty languages.
Sky Hopinka
Tuesday, February 24, 2026, 5:30pm, Kresge Theatre
Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, CA, Portland, OR, and Milwaukee, WI. In Portland, he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape–designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal and non-fictional forms of media.
Cauleen Smith
Orville M. Winsand Lecture for Critical Studies in Art
Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 5:30pm, Kresge Theatre
Cauleen Smith was raised in Sacramento, California and lives in Los Angeles. Smith is faculty in the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. Smith holds a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television. Smith is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a 2022 Heinz Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize; Ellsworth Kelly Award; The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; and a Rauschenberg Residency.
Previous Visiting Artists
Spring 2025
Rupy C. Tut, Martine Syms, Kelly Akashi, Joan Kee
Fall 2024
Ling-lin Ku, Josh Kline, Eugene Macki, Marshall Reese, jackie sumell
Spring 2020
Alisha Wormsley, Jaume Plensa, Hilton Als, Johannes DeYoung, Walid Raad
Fall 2019
Anya Clarke & Mitsuko Verdery, Kalup Linzy, Jongwoo Jeremy Kim, Amanda Ross-Ho, Tschabalala Self
Spring 2019
Janelle Iglesias, Jeremy Deller, Ulrike Müller, Thaddeus Mosley, Lenka Clayton & Jon Rubin, Sean Lynch, Beverly Semmes
Fall 2018
Rachel Rose, Miguel Gutierrez, Saba Innab, Zoe Leonard & Rhea Anastas, Alex Da Corte, Jessi Reaves
Spring 2018
Allison Smith, Cristobál Martínez, Dread Scott, Andrea Zittel, Heather Dewey-Hagborg & Chelsea Manning, Frances Stark, Robb Hernández
Fall 2017
Ian Cheng, Erin Markey, Shannon Ebner, Malik Gaines, Erin Cosgrove, Angela Dufresne, Sarah Oppenheimer
Spring 2017
Sandi Hilal, A. L. Steiner, Petra Cortright, Marc Horowitz, Firelei Baez, Narcissister, Wangechi Mutu & Adrienne Edwards, Imin Yeh, Huey Copeland
Fall 2016
Sondra Perry, Jeffrey Gibson, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Ming Wong, Nat Trotman
Spring 2016
Laleh Mehran, Ben Bigelow, Echo Eggebrecht, Willie Doherty, Magdalena Moskalewicz, Discoteca Flaming Star, Aureia Harvey of Tale of Tales, Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy
Fall 2015
Cornelia Parker, Rania Matar, Jill Magid, Marina Rosenfeld, Angela Washko, Silvia Kolbowski
Spring 2015
Cara Benedetto, Julian Oliver & Danja Vasiliev, Oron Catts, Yun-Fei Ji, Roberta Smith, Eric Shiner, Ryoji Ikeda, Rick Lowe, Emily Jacir, Jules de Balincourt
Fall 2014
Carrie Moyer, Lauren McCarthy & Kyle McDonald, Jen Delos Reyes, Kelly Richardson, Nikki Lee, Duke Riley, Jin Shan, Robert Storr
Spring 2014
Emily Cheng, Elika Hedayat, David Joselit, Eddo Stern, Amy Sillman, Shahzia Sikander, Dinh Q Lê, Nina Paley, Eric Dyer
Fall 2013
Tania Bruguera, Richard Pell, Pedro Reyes, Yasumasa Morimura, Peter Schjeldahl, Laetitia Sonami, Suzanne Wright
Spring 2013
Shana Moulton, Charles Atlas, Tehching Hsieh, Diana Al-Hadid, Otto Piene, Carrie Mae Weems, Pyuupiru
Fall 2012
Camille Utterback, Nicholas Van Woert, Julie Heffernan, Graham Harman, Moyra Davey
Spring 2012
Wafaa Bilal, Katrin Sigurdardottir, Ali Momeni, Stuart Comer, Lisa Sanditz, Brody Condon, Shary Boyle, Maya Lin
Fall 2011
Melissa Ragona, Pauline Oliveros, Nobuho Nagasawa, Stelarc, Simon Leung, Carolee Schneemann, Eva & Franco Mattes, Carol Conde & Karl Beveridge
Spring 2011
Golan Levin, Tom Sachs, Marina Zurkow, James Acord (memorial video screening), Adam Zaretsky, Amy Franceschini, Cynthia Lin
Fall 2010
Kate Gilmore, Richard Pell, Dzine, Jer Thorp, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Jean Shin, Doryun Chong, Nicola López, Guillermo Gómez Peña
Spring 2010
Trevor Paglen, Kim Beck, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Daniel Bozhkov, David Familian, Janine Antoni
Fall 2009
Ann Hamilton, Susanne Slavick, Ayanah Moor, Jim Trainor, Nikki Lee, Pat Oleszko, Paolo Pedercini, Xu Bing, Claire Bishop
Spring 2009
Peter Fend, Dara Greenwald & Josh Macphee, Steve Lambert, C. E. B. Reas / Marius Watz, Sarah Oppenheimer, Anne Ellegood, Nato Thompson, Marianne Weems, Tony Conrad, Daniel Martinez
Fall 2008
Thomas Hirschhorn, Ryan Gander, Charlie Todd, Stephanie Syjuco, Haegue Yang, Mark Bradford, Jeffrey Kastner, Julia Christensen, Yes Men, Barry McGee
Spring 2008
Will Rogan, Enrique Chagoya, Caroline A. Jones, Steve Kurtz, Paul DeMarinis, Joshua Mosley, Heather Kelley, Swoon
The Carnegie Mellon School of Art Lecture Series is made possible in part by Elizabeth (Thompson) and Thomas M. Cox (A’29) Distinguished Artists Funds, Robert L. Lepper Distinguished Lecture in Creative Inquiry, and Orville M. Winsand Lecture for Critical Studies. Carnegie Mellon makes every effort to provide accessible facilities and programs for individuals with disabilities. This publication can be made available in an alternate format upon request. For accommodations, contact the School of Art at schoolofart@cmu.edu or 412.268.2409. Lecture and event details are subject to change or cancellation.