Talk

MFA Fine Arts presents a talk by Michelle Grabner.

Michelle Grabner is an artist, writer, and a curator based in Chicago and Wisconsin. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She has also held teaching appointments at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cranbrook Academy of Art; Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts—Bard College; Yale University School of Art; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine.

Grabner is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2018 National Academician in the National Academy of Design, a 2024 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters Fellow, and a 2025 Nohl Fellow.

Major museum exhibitions curated by Grabner include the 2014 Whitney Biennial and the inaugural 2018 FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. In 2021 she co-curated Sculpture Milwaukee with Theaster Gates. In 2024 she curated “50 Paintings,” a survey of contemporary international painting at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Her work is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MUDAM - Musée d’Art Moderne Luxembourg; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH; Milwaukee Art Museum, WI; Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI; Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA; Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, NY; Bates College, Lewiston, Maine; The John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI; Art Omi, Ghent, NY; among other public collections.

Grabner, along with artist Brad Killam runs the artist-run project spaces, The Suburban, Milwaukee, WI (est. 1999) and The Poor Farm, Little Wolf, WI (est. 2008).

Talks is a series of lectures by artists, writers and scholars presented by MFA Fine Arts. Talks are held on Tuesdays at 3:00pm at 133 West 21st Street in Room 101C and on Zoom. Participation in the Q&A is limited to MFA Fine Arts students attending the lecture in person.

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