ArtCenter College of Design’s Graduate Seminar series marks a major milestone as acclaimed multimedia artist Matthew Barney takes the stage Tuesday night, February 25, continuing the program’s nearly four-decade tradition of bringing internationally recognized artists to engage with students and the Los Angeles art community. The event represents both the continuation of ArtCenter’s 39-year-old seminar tradition and highlights the institution’s role as a cultural cornerstone in Southern California’s art landscape.
“GRADUATE SEMINAR remains the standard bearer for the Graduate Art program. It’s the place that all the graduate students gather (most Tuesday evenings) to think and talk about art,” said Jack Bankowsky, Adjunct Professor at ArtCenter and former editor of Artforum magazine who has led the program since 2012.
Barney, one of contemporary art’s most innovative figures, will participate in a conversation at ArtCenter’s LA Times Media Center on the Hillside Campus at 7:15 p.m. The free public event will feature Barney discussing his boundary-pushing multidisciplinary art practices spanning film, sculpture, performance, and installation, from his groundbreaking Cremaster Cycle films to his recent experiments with dance, sculpture, and clay.
The timing of Barney’s appearance coincides with what critics describe as a renaissance in his career. “Writing in New York Times’ Jason Farago remarked that ‘Matthew Barney’s moment has come again,’ noting that the artist was making the best work of his career,” Bankowsky explained.
Born in San Francisco in 1967, Barney grew up in Boise, Idaho, where his athletic pursuits as a high school football player profoundly influenced his artistic vocabulary. His Cremaster Cycle, produced between 1994 and 2002, established him as a major figure in contemporary art, with critic Michael Kimmelman hailing him as “the most important artist of his generation” for his Wagnerian ambition and synthesis of mediums. His latest project, SECONDARY (2024), debuted at Fondation Cartier in Paris, combining ceramic sculptures with a video installation exploring entropy and materiality.
Since its founding in 1986 by Richard Hertz, the Graduate Seminar has hosted more than 1,000 talks, with nearly 300 presentations since Bankowsky’s leadership began in 2012. When Hertz joined ArtCenter, he brought with him influential LA artists including Stephen Prina, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolph, and Mike Kelley—figures who helped establish Los Angeles as a global center for art education and production.
The program has evolved into a nationally recognized forum bringing internationally acclaimed artists, critics, and art historians to engage with students and the broader Los Angeles art community. Bankowsky describes their approach to programming as seeking “a broad range of speakers with the goal of bringing creators to the seminar who will inspire each of our students.”
“Our talks are open to the public; Indeed, our generous patrons are happy to support what we do as they see the program as a resource not just to our students but for the greater LA arts community, recognizing our programming as among the strongest of its kind in the country,” said Bankowsky.
Following Barney’s appearance, the Spring 2025 Graduate Art guest lecture series will continue with presentations by Adrienne Edwards, a Whitney Museum curator known for her survey on Alvin Ailey; artist Trisha Donnelly; and artist Cory Arcangel, presented by former Artforum editor Tim Griffin. Representing younger artists, LA writer/critic Gracie Hadland will introduce artist-empresarios Max Pitegoff and Calla Henkel, who run LA’s Black Box theater.
The impact of the program extends beyond the immediate educational benefits.
“Gratifyingly, students come to us again and again saying that the seminar and the access the series afforded them to today’s most significant artists and thinkers about art, number among their most significant memories of their time at ArtCenter,” Bankowsky noted.
