ArtCenter to Host Lecture on Pioneering Feminist Artist Nancy Buchanan

ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena will present a lecture on pioneering conceptual artist Nancy Buchanan on Tuesday, Jan. 27, as part of its Spring 2026 Graduate Art guest lecture series. 

Catherine Taft, curator and deputy director of The Brick in Los Angeles, will discuss Buchanan’s six-decade career in performance, video, installation and drawing. The free public event begins at 7 p.m. at the LA Times Media Center on ArtCenter’s Hillside Campus. 

Buchanan helped establish F Space Gallery and exhibited at the Los Angeles Woman’s Building. She continued feminist support work as a member of Double X. 

Her work has appeared in major institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and New Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. 

The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles archives both Buchanan’s papers and video work. She has received four National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist grants, a COLA grant and a Rockefeller Fellowship in New Media. 

The Brick recently hosted a retrospective of Buchanan’s work. 

Taft previously held curatorial positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Getty Research Institute. Her 2024 traveling survey of ecofeminist art, Life on Earth, received an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Research Fellowship. 

With Laura Owens, Taft curated “Truthfully: Nancy Buchanan,” a retrospective of the artist’s career. 

Taft is a 2021 Fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership and serves as adjunct faculty in ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program. 

Graduate Art program coordinators Jack Bankowsky and Jason Smith organized the lecture series. Support comes from Jack Shear, Brenda R. Potter, Brendan Dugan, Lisson Gallery, Beth Rudin DeWoody, BLUM, Hannah Hoffman, Alan Hergott, David Kordansky and Jeffrey Deitch. 

RSVPs are not required for the event at 1700 Lida Street in Pasadena.