Undergraduate Overview

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

The life of an artist is largely self-directed and self-managed. Reflecting on our current gig economy, we know that artists have always been considered the original gig workers tasked with managing an active studio practice, alongside multiple jobs and projects. DIY: Self-Management for Artists looks to the inherent management tools embodied in artistic practice, as a theoretical and practical framework to apply toward managing a sustainable and purposeful professional and personal life. This class will explore listening and critical feedback, project development and management, marketing and branding strategy, strategic planning, negotiation, building and maintaining networks, and portfolio development. Readings will vary, and include articles and excerpts from: How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, The Art of Gathering: How we Meet and Why it Matters by Priya Parker, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek, Critical Response Process: A Method for Getting Useful Feedback on Anything you Make from Dance to Dessert by Liz Lerman; The Artist?s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love by Jackie Battenfield, Making: Your Life as an Artist by Andrew Simonet, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists by Sharon.Loudon Course work will vary but will include readings and critical writing responses throughout the semester, the development of a written project scope, regular class presentations and a final project on one aspect of a student's portfolio.

This course will examine the many issues and contexts surrounding what it means to be an artist today. We will consider the multiple positions of the artist in contemporary culture, their relationships to their audience(s) and to the market, and closely examine major themes and strategies in contemporary art-making. Students will further investigate and articulate their own practice and its relationship to larger creative and cultural structures to contextualize their own goals and desires for their work. What does it mean to be an artist at this moment in time? This is the fundamental and critical question of the course, and as the course proceeds, will yield a broad and diverse range of responses. We will be reading excerpts from Ways of Seeing, John Berger; ?What Art Is and Where it Belongs,? Paul Chan; and Carter Ratcliff. Additional readings and videos will be topical, and come from current sources as the New York Times, ArtNews, Artforum, The Guardian, Aperture, the NewYorker, Interview Magazine, Artnet, Hyperallergic, the Observer and Jsonline. The class consists of discussions of current readings and videos on contemporary artists, exhibitions, and themes, visits to gallery and museums, guest speakers, and student presentations. Each student will lead a discussion on selected contemporary artists and specific readings from our class syllabus. Students present their work at the beginning of the semester and the end, create an artist statement, artist bio, and a Powerpoint presentation on their work in relation to the artists and topics discussed in class. This class is driven by discussions and each student's full participation is expected.

This seminar introduces and develops professional practices for students pursuing a freelance career in comics, illustration, animation, or the like. By creating promotional material, portfolios, contracts, and invoices, students learn how to market themselves as freelance artists. In tandem with learning the ins and outs of industry standards, they have access to insight and advice from a variety of guest speakers whose careers and professional paths have paved the way for future creators. Readings will vary but typically include 'The Freelancer's Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Have the Career of Your Dreams- On Your Terms' by Sara Horowitz, 'The Graphic Artist Guild Pricing and Ethical Guidelines Handbook,' and 'Burn Your Portfolio' by Michael Janda. Students will create, revise, workshop, and submit a variety of professional documents that culminate in a compendium over the course of the semester. These are all documents that will prove to be necessary for a freelancing career. There will be weekly responses to readings, and rotating guest speakers to provide in-sight on their professional journeys.

We all have something that we do to offset stress and practice care for the self, be it jogging, knitting, reading, or meeting with friends. Care is a radical action. This course will look at care for the individual and care for the community as a strategy for art-making in the studio. Students will discuss self-care strategies that work for them and bring those strategies into the studio. The culminating project will be presenting a plan of action for continued self-care at SAIC and beyond with concrete examples of these strategies at play in the student's studio work. Students will work on a series of small sample projects throughout the semester in preparation for a final presentation of a finished piece. We will look to alternative models of evaluation and build our own unique dynamic approach to critiquing these pieces. Students will practice self-care by participating in the class reading group to discuss texts including All About Love by Bell Hooks, Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown, Conversation with Mike Kelley, Keith Harring's Journals, Eva Hesse's notes and more. Texts will be selected to best reflect the student's interests and studio practices. We will look at artists and practitioners who bring care into their work across disciplines including Shana Moulton (film and performance), Aram Han Sifuentes (craft and participation), H. Melt (poetry and writing), Adrian Piper (research) and more. Students will be asked to contribute significantly to an extended bibliography of care for the class to share beyond the Spring semester. This course includes weekly text discussions, small group critiques on sample pieces and culminates in a full class critique of a self directed final project. Ideas for this project will be supported through individual meetings with the instructor and visiting guest self care experts.

In this course, students will analyze and report on art world and cultural ecologies and explore professional work opportunities while reflecting on their current creative and scholarly interests. The course will lead to an expanded understanding of professional opportunities and the tools to pursue them while starting to identify each of our strengths and interests in identifying possible pathways for our lives that include (work life - studio life - love - finances - passion - family - etc...). Toward the end of the semester, as a way to bring into practice what was covered in the course, each student will participate in a class exhibition/presentation of current work and a portfolio of professional presentation materials to support one of the following (grant or job application and an exhibition/project proposal). Readings will address issues in the class and will include, 'GETTING YOUR SHIT TOGETHER: THE ULTIMATE BUSINESS MANUAL FOR EVERY PRACTICING ARTIST', ART/WORK (Revised + Updated) by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber, and selections from the follwing books; 'Living and sustaining a Creative Life by Sharon Louden, 'The Creative Habit: a Practical Guide' by Twyla Tharp, among others. The deliverables in this class will include the following: 1) An illustrated verbal presentation of your current creative portfolio. 2) Research on one of the visitors to the class. 3) Class Exhibition including the entire class in an On Campus Space. 4) Printed and Digital Professional Portfolio.

This course will prepare students for developing project proposals in various contexts ranging from informal collaborations with artist run spaces to formal grant applications. We will focus not only the process of conceptualizing a project idea and persuasively organizing the necessary content around it, but also explore the pragmatic aspects of carrying it out and interfacing collaboratively with an art space, an institution, or other artists. In addition to workshopping the various elements needed for a hypothetical project, students will be required to conceptualize, propose and execute a proposal of some scale at the end of the semester to put into practice the skills and ideas explored in the course. In doing so, we will use the project proposal as a means to understand the broader ecosystem of the artworld and the different roles people play within them: artist, curator, programmer, institution, non-profit infrastructure, commercial and corporate factors, and more. Chicago?s landscape of artists, institutions and DIY spaces will provide ample case studies and first hand know-how for us to tap into as we build an understanding of the interrelationships between an artistic practice and the space within which it is presented or contextualized.

This interdisciplinary seminar introduces, deepens and extends writing skills and helps to develop concepts that can sustain, guide and propel artistic practice after graduation. Central to the class is the professional completion of two grant applications, followed by a mock jury event that simulates actual jurying procedure. In conjunction with the applications, students write artist statements and develop project proposals. We also discuss how the arts and the public intersect, whether in popular opinion, historic context or professional settings. This includes an assessment of the relations of artists and audiences, artists and administrators and curators, and artists and critics.

This course examines the relationship between art and the market, by exploring the economic, cultural and institutional processes that shape the meaning and value of art. Using examples drawn from the art trade in ancient Rome, collections formed during theRenaissance, art acquired by young aristocrats during their ?Grand Tour?, the market for modern art in the first half of the twentieth century, and the billion dollar contemporary art business with a specific focus on China, this course explores the relationship between artists and patrons, patterns of shifting taste, the role of dealers and the impact of auction houses on art collecting. We will also test the boundaries of the meaning of ?market? by looking at artwork acquired as a consequence of wartime looting, ethnic cleansing, or through forced exchanges. Students willread historical texts and scholarship connecting the process of artistic creation and the trade industry, and engage in the sustained analysis of individual artworks, as well as the market structures in which such artworks were produced and bought. Primary sources will include excerpts from the work of Cicero, Giorgio Vasari, Denis Diderot. Readings will among others include chapters from Georgina Adam, 'The dark side of the BOOM'; Michael Findlay, 'The Value of Art'; Isabella Graw 'High Price'; Olav Velhuis 'Talking Prices'; and, Clare McAndrew, 'The Art Economy'. I will share recorded interviews with arts professionals and collectors - but we will also meet a number of them in person. In-class film screening: the Price of Everything. In-class participation including weekly response comments to the readings (30%); an in-class case study presentation (10%); and a 15 page paper on a selected artwork (60%).

In this interdisciplinary studio-seminar, students will work with SITE Galleries and its archive. Founded in 1994, SITE, once known as the Student Union Galleries (SUGs), is a student-run organization at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for the exhibition of student work. SITE was created as a response to the lack of spaces on SAIC's campus to accommodate the display of student work. Since then, SITE has had the support of faculty advisors and staff and has supported the professional development of roughly 80 student staff members, produced over 260 exhibitions, and has served more than 850 student artists. For more details about SITE Galleries, visit the following link - https://sites.saic.edu/sitegalleries/# This class will join the legacy celebration of SITE's 30th anniversary and will work with SITE's archive to support the efforts of bringing it to a publicly accessible stage while understanding the archival needs of the paper-based collection of ephemera, promotional materials and digital documentation. The main aim of the class is to conduct assessments of the materials condition and physical and digital needs. The class will culminate in the creation of an exhibition, and based on conversations with the SITE staff, the class will work as a team to learn about approaches to managing collections, working with archives and developing an exhibition. Students will have hands-on experience in curating an archival exhibition while learning about installation techniques, exhibition design and art handling. The class is an opportunity to activate one of SAIC's archives while activating a network of past SITE members who are now key actors in the art ecosystem. The class will include an active participation of previous SITE members as guests to the class and field trips to the arts organizations where they currently work or their studios. The class readings and critical content will include material that addresses a range of curatorial approaches focusing on specific institutional examples alongside the work of particular curators and experimental interpretation approaches to presenting archival research.

Where does an artwork begin & end? Where does an exhibition begin & end? Is an exhibition solely about the materialization of specific works of art, or is it also—and if so, in what ways—about the various conventions that go into the making of exhibitions—which include press releases, announcement cards, checklists, wall labels, catalogues, and digital-based media? Conventions like these are representations. We engage in different kinds of representations both because of the implausibility of re-presenting, and also because representation is a means by which we further, through the use of language and images, and through a process that is both otherwise and otherhow, the reach of the real. In this respect, moving closer to the artwork involves moving away from the artwork--to look closer at fringes and margins and representations, and ask a very fundamental question: to what extent are these various exhibition conventions actually part of the art--and not merely an extension of it? While the course is experiential and practical, it also explores conceptual issues underpinning the relationship between curatorial and creative practice. The class is open to both graduate and undergraduate students interested in curating across many historical periods, as well as BFA and MFA students interested in the ways exhibitions create contexts for their work, and how they might participate in the construction of these contexts.

Processes in Arts Administration offers project-based engagement with timely and relevant developments in Arts Administration. Through an incubator model, students will have the opportunity to explore creative processes that take place as part of independent projects, or 'in the front of the house' and behind the scenes of arts organizations, elevating creativity in arts administration. Course work will vary and may include researching, proposing and designing curatorial projects across media, programming supporting events for multiple audiences, and designing and publishing publicity, critical, and documentation materials in conjunction with projects. Students will develop site specific projects at proposal, model, and prototype levels. Course outcomes will include presentations and documentation.

Effective management requires knowledgeable and thoughtful preparation and use of financial information. This course focuses on the most critical financial management concepts and skills. Topics include: principles of financial management and control; budget preparation; financial management and strategic planning; allocation and recovery of indirect costs; preparation and analysis of financial reports; and coping with cutbacks. Quantitative analysis is emphasized. Students develop the confidence and ability to produce budgets, set prices and undertake other financial tasks required of administrators.

Effective management requires knowledgeable and thoughtful preparation and use of financial information. This course focuses on the most critical financial management concepts and skills. Topics include: principles of financial management and control; budget preparation; financial management and strategic planning; allocation and recovery of indirect costs; preparation and analysis of financial reports; and coping with cutbacks. Quantitative analysis is emphasized. Students develop the confidence and ability to produce budgets, set prices and undertake other financial tasks required of administrators.

It is becoming increasingly clear that facilitating is a widely present practice across the arts. Facilitation draws on performance modalities, while also engaging more broadly with design, sculpture, music, language, and gaming in their intersections with co-operative, social and community building practices. Facilitation emerges in cross-fertilization with practitioners’ experience as artists, and also as arts educators, therapists, mediators, and administrators, roles that already include designing and deploying communicative systems. Activist and Applied theater practices have long pioneered facilitative work. Artist Shaun Leonardo's performance-based workshops are a recent example of a facilitating practice that is both participatory and generates works. Gabrielle Civil's Experiments in Joy are an example of facilitating collaboration and community expansion. Community organizing and urban planning in the work of Rick Lowe and Theaster Gates facilitate structural opportunity and socio-political discourse. Facilitation additionally draws on cognitive, social and political theory, mitigating economic and epistemic violence, reframing research methodology, enacting participatory sense-making, complicating narrative and translation, and more. Participatory configurations outside of theaters, such as laboratories, workshops and interventions are becoming more common as integral parts of work with ideas, objects or performance, even as institutions may be grappling with how to accommodate them. Our course research, curatorial or artistic projects may explore the following questions: Who designs a facilitation process, and why? Which kind of experience goes into it? Which desire? Which cooperation? What is the role of a facilitator? Who agrees to participate in a facilitation setting, and why? How might we name or more precisely describe facilitating? Also, how is facilitating generative? Does it relate to game, play, and improvisation? Does it enhance creativity? Does it support organizing and institutional imagination? Can facilitation be embedded in an object, a structure, a notation, or an algorithm? How does it affect relations among humans? Which literatures and theories, which artistic practices are currently being articulated? What are predecessors?

The Management Studio is a space in which to explore 21st century management environments though a practice based investigation of contemporary organizational, project, and leadership models with an eye toward designing frameworks for the future. In addition to investigating so-called traditional management models, students will engage with current cultural management theory and practice around strategic planning, budgeting and capitalization, evaluation, communication strategy, digital communication, public relations, and fundraising (grant writing, individual donors, presentation skills). A distinguishing element of this course is the project-based learning environment. Management Studio integrates skill building projects into the course work for the purpose of practicing and developing individual and groups strategies and approaches to managing change/adaptation and cultural programming; supporting and engaging creativity; leading complex environments; building and understanding networks and connectivity; navigating teamwork, collaboration, self-organization, and problem-solving; and developing innovation practice skills. The projects in the studio are developed with external and internal partners and engage a broad set of skill building opportunities. Students select projects based on interest and a broad set of skill development opportunities. Management Studio II focuses on skills building in the areas of strategy and planning; resource development; working with artists; evaluation and data management; and communication strategy. In addition to team projects, there will be opportunities to cultivate individual concepts. The premise of this course is that participants will be active leaders in shaping the future of cultural/arts management. As such, the course invites broad and active participation and preparation for every class meeting. As a ?hands on? examination of management practice and theory, students are urged to critically engage with the material and to participate in class discussions, projects, presentations and debates. Each student will work on an ongoing project(s) in addition to class preparation to include reading, discussion and presentation. The willingness and ability to collaborate and continue to develop skills in team-based work is an essential element of this course and a core component of grading. Class will generally be divided into two sections or function as workshops. The first section will include workshops and discussions/presentations The second section will include project report outs and project work/discussion. Each project will be developed through the workshops as real time case studies.

Law, Politics And The Arts provides the student with an understanding of the legal system and the political process as they relate to the arts. The first part of the course is a survey of the American legal system and laws affecting artists and arts organizations, including topics such as contracts, corporations, copyrights, and First Amendment issues. The second part of the course explores the philosophical foundations and the practical experience of the relationship of government and the political process to the arts, with an emphasis on advocacy and the skills to change the rules. Readings will include judicial opinions, legislation, and excerpts from both fiction and non-fiction works. We will look at US Supreme Court rulings on the limits of the First Amendment as well as statutes protecting artists from hazardous paints and unscrupulous gallery owners. Readings are selected to be accessible to the general reader. Assignments include weekly readings, both within the syllabus and those brought in by students readings, several quizzes, and two written assignments including a practical advocacy project.

For spring 2023, the course in Digital Arts Administration will be curated around issues of Media Justice. In 2002, Malkia Devich Cyril, co-founder of the media Justice Network, helped coin the term “Media Justice”, and in 2019 declared that one significant goal of the Media Justice movement was to “fight for a future where we are all connected, represented and free.” Inspired by Malkia’s work, these are questions we will ask, together with invited guests and speakers who will contribute global and local perspectives: How can technology and design be decolonial, local and ethical? How do media literacy and technology education factor in the fight for social, political, and economic equality? How is Net Neutrality intertwined with racial, economic, and gender justice issues? What are the social implications and harms of artificial intelligence (algorithmic justice)? How do issues of Media Justice intersect with artistic practices? How do artistic and administrative digital practices relate to cultural policy processes? General Description: Arts Administration has increasingly intersected with topics in the digital realm, including copyright, archiving and data management, communication, education and access, in addition to displaying and maintaining the work by artists who work with electronic devices. Most recently, on-line platforms for museums and event venues have become crucial necessities. Technology rapidly changes, as do the needs it addresses and creates. For this reason, this topics class will choose a relevant area within Digital Arts Administration for each iteration. Course work will include readings and screenings, responses to presentations by invited experts, and an independent, individual or group research project appropriate to the annual topic of the course.

Processes in Arts Administration offers project-based engagement with timely and relevant developments in Arts Administration. Through an incubator model, students will have the opportunity to explore creative processes that take place as part of independent projects, or 'in the front of the house' and behind the scenes of arts organizations, elevating creativity in arts administration. Course work will vary and may include researching, proposing and designing curatorial projects across media, programming supporting events for multiple audiences, and designing and publishing publicity, critical, and documentation materials in conjunction with projects. Students will develop site specific projects at proposal, model, and prototype levels. Course outcomes will include presentations and documentation.