[photo credit: ArtCenter]
Leigh, who won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Biennale and whose 20-year career survey appeared at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2023, was to be the subject of a presentation by writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. The talk was part of ArtCenter’s free Spring 2026 Graduate Art Seminar Lecture Series, which brings internationally recognized artists and critics to the college’s Hillside Campus on Tuesday evenings.
Rhodes-Pitts, an associate professor of writing at Pratt Institute and a 2025 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, has written on Leigh’s work for the Guggenheim Museum. She is also the author of “Harlem Is Nowhere,” a New York Times Notable Book and National Book Critics Circle finalist.
Leigh, born in Chicago in 1967, works in sculpture, installations, video, performance and social practice. Her art centers on Black female subjectivity, drawing on African art traditions and feminism. She represented the United States at the 59th Venice Biennale with her exhibition “Sovereignty” and was the first artist commissioned for the High Line Plinth in New York, where her 16-foot bronze sculpture “Brick House” was unveiled in 2019.
Her work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, the Tate Gallery in London, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, among other institutions. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023. The Royal Academy in London is organizing a large-scale solo exhibition of her work for Fall 2027.
The Spring 2026 lecture series, organized by Jack Bankowsky and Jason Smith of ArtCenter’s Graduate Art department, runs Tuesdays from January 20 through April 21. All lectures take place at 7 p.m. at the L.A. Times Media Center on ArtCenter’s Hillside Campus, 1700 Lida St. They are free and open to the public, and RSVPs are not required.
The next lecture in the series is Ryan Trecartin on March 3. The full schedule is available at artcenter.edu.
