John A. Cooper Visiting Artist Lecture Series

Nicole Eisenman

Fall 2024 John A. Cooper Visiting Artist Lecture Speaker

Having established themself as a painter, Nicole Eisenman has expanded their practice into the third dimension. They are a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018. In 2019, their work was included in both the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. Recent solo exhibitions include What Happened, Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; 2023–24. Heads, Kisses, Battles: Nicole Eisenman and the Moderns, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland; Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles; and Kunstmuseum Den Haag; 2021–22. Giant Without a Body, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, 2021; Sturm und Drang, Contemporary Austin, Texas, 2020; Baden Baden Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany, 2019. They live and work in Brooklyn.

Eisenman delivered an in-person artist talk on October 29, 2024 at 5:15 p.m. in Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium.

Glenn Ligon

Spring 2024 John A. Cooper Visiting Artist Lecture Speaker

Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) is an artist living and working in New York. Throughout his career, Ligon has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature, and society across bodies of work that build critically on the legacies of modern painting and conceptual art. He earned his B.A. from Wesleyan University (1982) and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (1985). In 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a mid-career retrospective, Glenn Ligon: America, organized by Scott Rothkopf, that traveled nationally. Important solo exhibitions include Post-Noir, Carre d'Art, Nîmes (2022); Glenn Ligon: Call and Response, Camden Arts Centre, London (2014); and Glenn Ligon — Some Changes, The Power Plant Center for Contemporary Art, Toronto (traveled internationally) (2005).

Select curatorial projects include Grief and Grievance, New Museum, New York (2021); Blue Black, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (2017); and Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions, Nottingham Contemporary and Tate Liverpool (2015). Ligon's work has been shown in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2015, 1997), Berlin Biennial (2014), Istanbul Biennial (2019, 2011), and Documenta XI (2002).

Ligon delivered an in-person artist talk on March 5, 2024, at 5:15 p.m.

Louise Lawler (B.F.A. '69)

Spring 2022 John A. Cooper Visiting Artist Lecture Speaker

Louise Lawler (b. 1947) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is a graduate of Cornell University (B.F.A. '69).

Lawler delivered an in-person artist talk on April 11, 2022, at 5:15 p.m.

Catherine Opie

Spring 2021 John A. Cooper Visiting Artist Lecture Speaker

Catherine Opie (b. 1961, Sandusky, Ohio) is an artist working with photography, film, collage, and ceramics in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad and is held in over 50 major collections throughout the world. Opie was a recipient of The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art Medal in 2016, The Julius Shulman Excellence in Photography Award in 2013, and a U.S. Artists Fellowship in 2006. In September of 2008, the Guggenheim Museum in New York opened a mid-career exhibition titled, Catherine Opie: American Photographer. A large survey of Opie's work opened at the Henie Onstad Art Center in Sandvika, Norway in 2017. She debuted her film, The Modernist, at Regen Projects, Los Angeles in 2018. Her forthcoming monograph, Catherine Opie, will be published by Phaidon in May 2021. 

Opie received a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, California, and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in 1988. She holds the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Endowed Chair in Art at the University of California, Los Angeles where she is a professor of Photography.

Opie delivered a virtual artist talk on April 5, 2021.