Major Contemporary Artists Head to Pasadena for Free Lecture Series

Left to right (top): Charles Ray (Photo: Joshua White), Nancy Buchanan (Photo: Ransom Rideout, courtesy of Nancy Buchanan), Isabelle Graw (Photo: Valerie Herklotz); (middle) Sterling Ruby (Photo: Melanie Schiff), Ryan Trecartin (Photo: Borna Sammak, courtesy of Ryan Trecartin), Jason Farago (Photo: courtesy of the writer); (bottom) Simone Leigh (Photo: Paul Mpagi Sepuya), Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (Photo: Marcus Werner, courtesy of Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts). [Collage courtesy of ArtCenter]

The sculptor whose career retrospective filled the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The video artist The New Yorker called “the most consequential artist to have emerged since the 1980s.” The first Black woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale.

All three will speak in Pasadena this spring — for free.

ArtCenter College of Design opens its Spring 2026 Graduate Art Seminar Lecture Series on January 20, bringing 12 internationally recognized artists and critics to its Hillside Campus for public lectures. The lineup includes sculptor Charles Ray, video artist Ryan Trecartin, and Simone Leigh, who won the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion in 2022.

The series, organized by Artforum Editor-at-Large Jack Bankowsky and ArtCenter faculty member Jason Smith, runs Tuesdays through April 21 at the L.A. Times Auditorium, 1700 Lida St. Lectures begin at 7 p.m. No reservation is required.

For Pasadena residents, the series offers access to artists who typically command major museum exhibitions and international attention. Ray, who lives and works in Los Angeles, has shown at the Met, Centre Pompidou, and three Venice Biennales. Leigh, a Chicago-born sculptor whose bronze figures explore Black female subjectivity, was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2023.

Trecartin, whose chaotic, digitally layered videos examine identity in the internet age, was the youngest artist to present at the Whitney Biennial when he appeared in 2006.

The series also features a February 17 roundtable on art writing with New York Times critic Jason Farago and Texte zur Kunst founder Isabelle Graw, whose German magazine has shaped contemporary art criticism since 1990.

Other sessions pair presenters with featured artists: writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts presents Simone Leigh on February 24. Rhodes-Pitts, author of the National Book Critics Circle finalist “Harlem Is Nowhere,” has written extensively about Leigh’s work and served as the subject for one of Leigh’s early portrait sculptures.

Nancy Buchanan, a conceptual artist who helped shape the Los Angeles feminist art movement in the 1970s, is presented by Catherine Taft on January 27.

The Graduate Art Seminar series has been a forum for dialogue between ArtCenter’s graduate students, faculty, and the broader public for decades. ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program highlights intensive studio practice and maintains a low faculty-to-student ratio, with students working across film, video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance, and installation.

Support for the series comes from Jack Shear, Brenda R. Potter, Brendan Dugan, Lisson Gallery, Beth Rudin DeWoody, David Kordansky, and Jeffrey Deitch.

ArtCenter’s Spring 2026 Graduate Art Lecture Series Lineup: