Visiting Artist Colloquium

media release: Discover the latest developments in fine art, craft, and design at our free public lectures by some of the nation’s most prominent artists, critics, and gallery and museum directors.

The Art Department Colloquium is a series supported by the Anonymous Fund and the Brittingham Trust. Faculty lectures are held every Tuesday and Visiting Artist lectures are held every Wednesday (Elvehjem L160) during the academic year, and are free and open to the public. Online at Zoom: uwmadison.zoom.us/my/artcolloquium

Dr Jenni Sorkin is professor of history of art & architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also affiliated faculty in the Departments of Art, Feminist Studies, History and Media Arts and Technology. She writes on the intersections between gender, material culture, and contemporary art, working primarily on women artists and underrepresented media. Her books include Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women Artists, 1947–2016 (Skira, 2016), and Art in California (Thames & Hudson, 2021). She has contributed scholarly essays to major recent exhibitions and books that seek to reconfigure the received histories of twentieth century art, including Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College (ICA Boston, 2015), Outliers and American Vanguard Art (National Gallery of Art, 2018), Among Others: Blackness at MOMA (MOMA, 2018), and Groundswell: Women Artists of Land Art (Nasher Sculpture Center, 2023). As well, Sorkin collaborates on monographs with a diverse range of contemporary women artists, including Karla Black, Estate of Heidi Bucher, Judy Chicago, Tara Donovan, Yayoi Kusama, Estate of Rosemary Mayer, Amy Sherald, and Emily Mae Smith. She was educated at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bard College, and received her PhD from Yale University. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Modern Craft, the University of California Press Editorial Board, and currently serves as Co-Executive Editor of Panorama: The Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art. Currently, she is in residence as a Senior Fellow of American Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.