Pratt Institute's School of Art and Design will present lectures by renowned individuals through its Graduate Communications Design, Digital Arts, Film/Video, Fine Arts, Interior Design, and Photography Departments. All lectures are free and open to the public; however, seating priority will be given to current students with Pratt identification.

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Graduate Communications Design:

The Graduate Communications Design Department will present three talks as part of its spring 2013 design lecture series on Thursday, February 21; Thursday, March 21; and Monday, April 1 in Manhattan. The series will feature talks by Sonnenzimmer (Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi), The Post Family, and Greg D'Onofrio of Kind Company. All talks will begin promptly at 6PM.     

Sonnenzimmer
Thursday, February 21, 6 PM
123 West 18th Street, Third Floor, Room 301  
Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi are Sonnenzimmer, a Chicago-based art and print studio founded in 2006 that is influenced by pop-culture and driven by form and technique. The duo model their business on the idea of a music studio — making, performing, and touring with their designs. Their work combines typography, printmaking, graphic design, and fine art, creating a sophisticated and contemporary aesthetic.

The Post Family
Thursday, March 21, 6 PM
144 West 14th Street, Second Floor, Room 213
The Post Family is a designer collective and “family” of friends that support each other's creative passions in an industrial space on the outskirts of Chicago. The Post Family is also a gallery, letterpress and screen printing studio, and experimental music venue and creative incubator that was founded in 2007 as a respite from their digital day jobs. The Family, which relies both on digital and analog modes of creation, comprises Rod Hunting, Chad Kouri, David Sieren, Davey Sommers, Sam Rosen, Alex Fuller, and Scott Thomas. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Dean's Office of The School of Art and Design.

Greg D'Onofrio of Kind Company
Monday, April 1, 6 PM
144 West 14th Street, Second Floor, Room 213
Kind Company is a small, two to four person independent web and print design office located in Brooklyn. Since 2004, partners Patricia Belen and Greg D'Onofrio have been using design as a tool to help small to medium sized businesses communicate their ideas, products, and services. The lecture will be presented around Kind Company's collection of historical graphic design items, included in  “Graphic Modern,” an exhibition of Modernist graphic design from the United States, Italy, and Switzerland from 1934 through 1966 that was on view in 2012 at Fordham University.    
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Digital Arts:

The Digital Arts Department will present lectures by five artists as part of its spring 2013 lecture series, Wednesdays from 12:45 PM to 1:45 PM in Myrtle Hall, Lecture Room 4E-3, Brooklyn. The series features critics, artists, and curators of digital art. The guests include both emerging talent and established pioneers in the fields of digital animation, motion arts, interactive artwork, and digital imaging. Myrtle Hall is located at 536 Myrtle Avenue between Grand Avenue and Steuben Street; the entrance to the building is located off 215 Willoughby Avenue.  
 
Carter Hodgkin
Wednesday, January 30, 12:45 PM
Myrtle Hall, Lecture Room 4E-3
Combining digital media with drawing, painting, and animation, Carter Hodgkin creates work which explores a new language of abstraction. Articles and reviews of her work have appeared in such publications as Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, Flash Art, Artbyte, and The New Yorker. Hodgkin has received numerous grants and fellowships, including the 2012 Gottlieb Foundation Artist Fellowship. Hodgkin is represented by Denise Bibro Fine Art, a contemporary art gallery in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood.
 
Chico MacMurtrie

Wednesday, February 27, 12:45 PM
Myrtle Hall, Lecture Room 4E-3
Chico MacMurtrie is internationally recognized for his large-scale, performative kinetic installations and interactive public sculpture. A 1987 UCLA graduate in New Forms and Concepts, he has exhibited widely in America, Europe, and Asia, and has received the support of many notable granting agencies, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Daniel Langlois Foundation. His awards include five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the The Fundación Telefonica / Vida Life, CEC Artslink, and Ars Electronica award.
 
Lisa LaBracio
Wednesday, March 6, 12:45 PM
Myrtle Hall, Lecture Room 4E-3
Lisa LaBracio works in independent film and animation, producing short animated films, commercials, and graphics for documentaries. She currently works for the new educational initiative, TED-Ed. In 2011, LaBracio traveled to Kenya as a visiting teaching artist on behalf of FilmAid International in the Dadaab Refugee Camp, on the border of Somalia, where she conducted an animation workshop with the youth to produce a short, educational animated film on HIV/AIDS. The Dadaab Animation Project brings together just about everything that excites her about visual arts, filmmaking, and the world in which we live, and it is her hope to continue to use film and animation as an educational tool as well as one of the best communication devices of our time.
 
Andrea Ackerman
Wednesday, April 3, 12:45 PM
Myrtle Hall, Lecture Room 4E-3
Andrea Ackerman is a 3-D computer animation artist who specializes in subtle and emotionally compelling character design and animation, as well as complex synthetic landscapes. Both the characters and the landscapes evoke a sense of a seamless transformation-virtual to living. She has been called the “Georgia O'Keefe of the computer graphics world.” In her projects, Ackerman performed every aspect of the creative and technical work including concept, modeling, rigging, animating, dynamics, rendering, soundtrack, video editing, and DVD building. Ackerman's background in physics and her training as a medical doctor give her particular insights into evocative character design.
 
Signe Baumane
Wednesday, April 17, 12:45 PM
Myrtle Hall, Lecture Room 4E-3
Signe Baumane was born in Latvia, and lived there until she was 18. She began working as an animator in 1989, taking a position at Dauka Animation Studio, and has continued working ever since. Besides doing animation, Baumane is a fine artist, who has produced numerous paintings and sculptures, and has also worked as an illustrator for children's books. Her films have been screened at important film festivals such as Annecy, Tribeca, Sundance, Berlin, Ottawa, Venice, and they have received numerous awards.  
 
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Film/Video:  
 
The Film/Video Department has lined up its 2013 lecture series featuring acclaimed and varied practitioners of time-based media. Lectures will take place in Higgins Hall Auditorium or the ARC Building, both in Brooklyn. Higgins Hall Auditorium is located at 61 St. James Place and the ARC Building, Hall E-2 is located on the east side of Pratt Institute campus at 200 Willoughby Avenue.

Doors will open to Pratt students, faculty and staff at 6 PM and to the public at 6:15 PM. These talks are all free and open to the public.
These lectures are supported through the School of Art and Design and The Office of the Provost. The media sponsor is
BOMB Magazine.

Eve Sussman
Tuesday, January 29, 6:30 PM
Higgins Hall Auditorium
Eve Sussman is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work has been featured at Sundance, the Berlinale, and the Whitney Museum's Biennial. She will discuss her practice, which incorporates film, video, installation, sculpture, and photography. This lecture is co-sponsored with the Department of Fine Arts.

Chico Pereira
Tuesday, February 26, 6:30 PM
ARC Building, Hall E-2
Acclaimed Spanish director Chico Pereira will discuss the mix of fiction and nonfiction in his latest film, Pablo's Winter, a minimalist narrative based on real life people and performed by them. The film will be screened on the opening night of Documentary Fortnight 2013: MoMA's International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media.
 
Igor Vamos
Thursday, March 21, 6:30 PM
Higgins Hall Auditorium
Igor Vamos, internationally recognized multimedia artist, and co-creator of the award-winning activist group The Yes Men, will discuss the juncture of culture jamming, social activism, performance, and video. This talk is co-sponsored by the Humanities and Media Studies Department in Pratt Institute's School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.       
 
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Fine Arts:
 
The Fine Arts Department will present lectures by five renowned artists as part of the 2012-2013 Visiting Artists Lecture Series, from 12:45 to 1:45 PM, Tuesdays, in the Engineering Building, Room 307, 200 Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn. Those participating will speak to the Pratt community about their influences, artwork, and careers.      

The Pratt Visiting Artists Lecture Series is an annual yearlong series organized by the Fine Arts Department in the School of Art and Design at Pratt Institute to welcome nationally and internationally recognized fine artists to share their experiences with the Pratt community.   

Trenton Doyle Hancock  
Tuesday, February 5, 12:45 PM
Engineering Building, Room 307
Oklahoma City-born artist Trenton Doyle Hancock received his B.F.A. from Texas A&M University and went on to earn an M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art.  He has recently held solo exhibitions at James Cohan Gallery, Sheldon Museum of Art, the University of South Florida Art Museum, Dunn and Brown Contemporary, and Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. He has twice participated in the Whitney Biennial.  Hancock's awards include Joyce Alexander Wein Award, S.J. Wallace Trauma Fund Prize, Penny McCall Foundation Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and Skowhegan Camille Hanks Cosby Fellowship for African-American Artists.  His work has been a part of various publications, including The New York Times, Modern Painters, Art Forum, and Art21. This talk is sponsored through the generous support of the Robert Lehman Foundation.   
 
Michelle Handelman
 
Tuesday, February 19, 12:45 PM
Engineering Building, Room 307
Multimedia artist Michelle Handelman earned her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute and later went on to receive her M.F.A. from Bard College.  Her awards include the Gottleib Foundation Emergency Fund New York Artist's Fellowship, NYSCA Individual Artist Grant, Horizon Foundation Grant, and Film Arts Foundation Grant. She has exhibited in various venues that include Rx Gallery, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Bologna Cultural Center, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Her work has been written about in Art in America, The New Yorker, Pittsburg Tribune-Review, The Village Voice, and Artforum. This talk is sponsored through the generous support of the Robert Lehman Foundation.
 
Brody Condon  
Tuesday, March 19, 12:45 PM
Engineering Building, Room 307
Multimedia artist Brody Condon attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and later went on to receive his M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego. He has recently exhibited at On Stellar Rays, Aldrich Contemporary Museum, LACMA, PS1 MoMA, and Hammer Museum. His awards include the Creative Capital Grant, the Franklin Furnace Grant, and the Interpolis N. V. Grant. Condon has recently been published in ARTnews, The New York Times, Art in America, Beautiful Decay, and Modern Painters. He has participated in recent lectures at Carnegie Mellon University, Art Center College of Design, Glasgow School of Art, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. This talk is sponsored through the generous support of the Robert Lehman Foundation.
 
Mary Walling Blackburn  
Tuesday, April 2, 12:45 PM
Engineering Building, Room 307
Mary Walling Blackburn received her B.A. from the University of New Hampshire. Her M.F.A. was earned from New York University Tisch School of Fine Arts.  She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  She has recently exhibited at Center for Cultural Studies at Bard College, Chicago Cultural Center, Kowloon Hong Kong, Sutton Gallery, Blanton Museum of Art, and Mass MoCA. Her work has been published in Artforum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, and Paper Monument. She has recently taught at The Cooper Union School of Art, Empire State College, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This talk is sponsored through the generous support of the Robert Lehman Foundation.
 
Diana al-Hadid  
Tuesday, April 9, 12:45 PM
Engineering Building, Room 307
Syrian-born installation artist Diana Al-Hadid received her B.A. and B.F.A. from Kent State University and earned her M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University.  She has an upcoming solo exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery. She has recently shown at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Nasher Sculpture Center, Centro de Arte Contemporàneo, La Conservera, and Nevada Museum of Art.  She has also participated in recent group exhibitions at Institute du Monde Arabe, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Havremagasinet, Haugar Art Museum, and Mass MoCA.  Her work has lately been featured in Art+Auction, Modern Painters, Art21, Art Papers, Sculpture, and Art+Architecture.
 
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Interior Design:   
 
Vladimir Kagan  
Monday, January 28, 6 PM
Higgins Hall Auditorium  
   
The Interior Design Department is hosting a special lecture by Vladimir Kagan on Monday, January 28 at 6 PM in Higgins Hall Auditorium, 61 St. James Place, Brooklyn. Kagan is one of today's most enduring designers of modern furniture with a career that has spanned over sixty years. Originally from Germany, Kagan studied Architecture at Columbia University. Early commissions include the Delegate's Cocktail Lounge for the first United Nations Headquarters in Lake Success, New York. His prize-winning designs have been published in books and magazines internationally and are in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Vitra Design Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many others.    
 
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Photography:   
 
The Photography Department will present talks through its Pratt Photography Lectures series, which is ongoing now through April 3. All lectures will take place at 6:30 PM on Wednesday nights in Higgins Hall Auditorium, 61 St. James Place, Brooklyn, unless otherwise noted. Doors will open to members of the Pratt community at 6 PM, with public admission beginning at 6:15 PM.   
 
Trevor Paglen
Wednesday, February 20, 6:30 PM
Higgins Hall Auditorium
Trevor Paglen's work deliberately blurs lines between science, contemporary art, journalism, and other disciplines to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to see and interpret the world around us. He is the author of five books and numerous articles on subjects including experimental geography, state secrecy, military symbology, photography, and visuality. An exhibition of Paglen's work, titled The Last Pictures, will be exhibited February 7-March 9, 2013 at Metro Pictures in Chelsea. The exhibition is of photographs that represent modern human history; Paglen worked for nearly five years on the photography project, which in disc format will soon be encased to the exterior of a communications satellite orbiting the earth.
 
LaToya Ruby Frazier  
Wednesday, March 27, 6:30 PM
Higgins Hall Auditorium
LaToya Ruby Frazier's work in photography and video has employed such themes as the body and landscape, familial and communal history, private and public space, and human complexity. An exhibition of her social documentary and portraiture work — her first solo exhibition in New York and titled LaToya Frazier: A Haunted Capital — will be on display in The Brooklyn Museum's Mezzanine Gallery, Second Floor, from March 22 through August 11, 2013. Frazier has exhibited at The Venice Biennale and Whitney Biennial and at venues including The Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1, and New Museum. Frazier is associate curator for the Mason Gross galleries in the Visual Arts Department at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She was appointed critic in photography at Yale University School of Art in 2012. This lecture is sponsored by the Pratt Photo League.
 
Deborah Luster
Wednesday, April 3, 7 PM
Higgins Hall Auditorium
Deborah Luster is a New Orleans-based photographer. The theme of violence remains front and center in her photographs revolving around the murder of her mother in 1988. She is most famous for her series One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana; Tooth for an Eye: a Chorography of Violence in Orleans Parish; and Prison Culture. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and others.    
 
Kathy Ryan, award-winning photo editor for The New York Times Magazine, delivered the first lecture of the 2013 series on Wednesday, January 23. Her lecture was sponsored by the Pratt Photo League.
 
MEDIA CONTACT:

Amy Aronoff at 718-636-3554 or aarono29@pratt.edu