Visiting Artists & Designers

The visiting artists and designers lecture series is an important component of the Visual Arts program at UMBC. By bringing contemporary artists and designers from around the country to discuss their work, students gain a greater perspective about local, regional and international art communities. The lectures are also inspirational and provide students and faculty with different insights and potentials for their own art practices.   

Upcoming in 2026

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. The New York Times has described Barry as “among this country’s greatest conjoiners of words and images, known for plumbing all kinds of touchy subjects in cartoons, comic strips and novels, both graphic and illustrated.”Widely credited with expanding the literary, thematic and emotional range of American comics, Barry’s seminal comic strip, Ernie Pook’s Comeek, ran in alternative newspapers across North America for thirty years. Barry has authored 21 books, worked as a commentator for NPR, and had a regular monthly feature in Esquire, Mother Jones Magazine, Mademoiselle, and Salon.

Barry has received numerous awards and honors for her work, among them two William Eisner awards, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, the Wisconsin Library Association’s RR Donnelly Award, the Washington State Governor’s Award, the Holtz Center for Science & Technology Outreach Fellowship, The Museum of Wisconsin Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2017 Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonists Society. She also received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Philadelphia University of Art in 2015, and was inducted into the Cartoonist’s Hall of Fame in 2016. In 2019 Lynda Barry was honored as a MacArthur Fellow (also known as the Genius Grant). In 2020 she received the 2019 NCS Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year, and in 2021 Oregon State University presented her with the Stone Award for Literary Achievement.

 

2025

With a career spanning 40 years, Rich Zim‘s notable credits include Gumby, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, and The SpongeBob Movie. He is currently the CEO and president of Zim animation, where he has been making psychedelic oozing dripping clay animation sequences in his own studio for projects such as Smiling friends, Rick and Morty, Middlemost Post and many other TV shows and movies.

Ada Pinkston is a multimedia artist, educator, and cultural organizer living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. Her performance work has been featured at a variety of spaces including The Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Walters Art Museum, The Peale Museum, Transmodern Performance Festival, P.S.1, The New Museum, Light City Baltimore and the streets of Berlin, Baltimore, Orlando, Washington DC, and New York. A graduate of Wesleyan University (B.A.) and Maryland Institute College of Art (M.F.A.) Her work has been supported by The Yaddo Artist Residency and McDowell Colony. Her work can be found in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the augmented reality sculpture garden at Magic Johnson Park in South Central Los Angeles. Limited editions of her most recent work can be found at The Mimosa House London.

Kei Ito is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is centered around utilizing the conceptual framework of photography to visualize the invisible. Mainly employing camera-less photographic techniques, performance, and installation, Ito creates large-scale installations and a variety of photographic projects that excavate hidden histories. As a third-generation atomic bomb victim living in the US, Ito employs his generational history as a series of case studies that often applies the language of monuments and memorials, initiating a journey of healing and growth while inviting audiences to explore nuanced social issues and honor the memories of those lost to both historical and contemporary tragedies. Notably, his pieces are included in institutional collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Norton Museum of Art, the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, the Candela Collection, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Johns Hopkins University, and the Georgia Museum of Art.

Previous Visiting Artists & Designers:

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000