Visiting Artists

Students have the opportunity to enhance their education by taking part in the Department of Visual Arts Visiting Artist Program. Throughout the year, many prominent and emerging artists visit the department to present their work and lead discussions with students. All presentations are free and open to the public. Past artists include James Duesing, Laure Drogoul, Billie Grace Lynn and Jeanne Dunning.

Visiting Artist lectures and other important arts events at UMBC are announced at the UMBC Arts & Cultural Events Calendar

Fall 2009 Visiting Artist Lecture Series

Trisha Ziff
Screening + Lecture
Lecture and Screening
Thursday, November 5th LH2 (Chemistry Bldg.) 4:30pm

Trisha Ziff is a British born curator, photographer and filmmaker who currently lives in Mexico City and whose work explores cultural hybridism. She will screen and discuss her documentary film CHEVOLUTION (90min.), based on her international exhibition and book Che: Revolution and Commerce, published in Spanish, Italian and English. CHEVOLUTION looks at the famous image of Che Guevara and tells the story of what may be the most reproduced image in the history of photography.

Trisha Ziff’s other major international curatorial projects include: Mary Kelly’s Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi, Hidden Truths Bloody Sunday and Distant Relations, a dialogue between Irish, Mexican and Chicano artists (1996). Her recent film productions include Oaxacalifornia (US/UK,1996), My Mexican Shiva (Mexico, 2007) and Nine Months 9 Days (Mexico, 2010). She is also the Director of the film La Maleta Mexicana and in 2006 founded 212BERLIN, a space dedicated to the image in Mexico City. She is currently working on a film Between Dog and Wolf (Mexico), while developing major exhibition for the 70th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War (Mexico/Spain). Trisha Ziff has received many awards including a BANCOMER Foundation award, and she is a Guggenheim Scholar.

Michael Beruit of Pentagram
Thursday, November 12, 7pm
AOK Library Gallery

Michael Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1957, and studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. Prior to joining Pentagram in 1990 as a partner in the firm's New York office, he worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates, ultimately as vice president of graphic design.

His clients at Pentagram have included The New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Council of Fashion Designers of America, Harley-Davidson, The Museum of Arts and Design, United Airlines, The William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, Mohawk Paper Mills, Princeton University, the New York Jets, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Morgan Library and Museum.

He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal. He has served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is president emeritus of AIGA National. He also serves as on the boards of the Architectural League of New York and New Yorkers for Parks. Michael was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1989, to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 2003, and was awarded the profession's highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in 2006. In 2008, he was named winner in the Design Mind category of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards. Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art, and a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management. He writes frequently about design and is the co-editor of the five-volume series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic published by Allworth Press. His commentaries about graphic design in everyday life have been heard nationally on the Public Radio International program Studio 360 and his appearance in Helvetica: A Documentary Film is considered by many that movie's funniest moment. Michael is a co-founder of the weblog DesignObserver.com, and his book 79 Short Essays on Design was published in 2007 by Princeton Architectural Press.