Study Trips

Faculty-Led Study Trips

Faculty-led study trips are credit-bearing courses taught by SAIC faculty where instruction takes place off-campus. Students can earn credits towards their degree completion and the off-campus study credit requirement. Study Abroad and faculty trip leaders are excited to announce study trips that are planned for winter and summer 2027. 

Winter 2027 

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Textiles & Other Artistic Practices in Peru

Faculty: Pamela Vanderlinde, Associate Professor, Adjunct (Fashion Design) and Edgar X. Aguilera, Assistant Professor (Fashion Design)
Dates: January 3–January 21, 2027*
*Dates are subject to change
Credits: 3 cr Studio (3000 level) 
Course level: Undergraduate and Graduate 
Location: Cusco, Ollantaytambo, Santa Teresa, Aguas Calientes, Peru

Come to Peru and encounter a unique experience while gaining insight into South America's large tradition of textile crafts as well as other artistic practices. In addition to our in-depth study of textiles, we will also concentrate on art as a catalyst for intercultural exchange, focusing on the rich vibrant indigenous Quechuan communities of the Peruvian Highlands. A series of practicums focusing on backstrap weaving, service projects, ritualistic ceremonies, and interactions with local indigenous communities, we will embrace cultural tourism as a means of intercultural exchange through our social interactions. Another focus is the pre-Hispanic archaeological sites located in the Sacred Valley, with a visit to Machu Picchu as a highlight.

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Los Angeles Arts Immersion

Faculty: Arnold J. Kemp, Presidential Professor (Painting and Drawing) and Scott Reeder, Associate Professor (Painting and Drawing)
Dates: January 3–January 17, 2027*
*Dates are subject to change
Credits: 3 or 6 cr Studio (4000) level
Course level: Undergraduate and Graduate 
Location: Los Angeles, California

In this Study Trip Intensive, students will learn about the dynamic art histories of Mexican American/Chicanx, Black American, and other contemporary artists living and working in Los Angeles. Students will visit museums, galleries, and community centers dedicated to nurturing, showcasing, and archiving the art of people of color, including Black- and Latinx-founded art institutions. Students will meet curators, artists, and other art professionals, and be given private tours to view historical sites and modern and contemporary art, including MOCA, the Brick, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, LACMA, The Hammer Museum, The Watts Towers, Human Resources, and the Performance Art Museum. The class will participate in at least one artist-led art-making workshop and visit the studios of a wide range of Los Angeles-based artists including Rafa Esparza, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Charles Gaines, Patty Chang, Laura Owens, Nakita Gale, Rebecca Morris, Mark Bradford, Cauleen Smith, Anna Sew Hoy, Anna Betbeze, Brooklin A. Soumahoro, and Carolyn Castaño.

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Siena, Italy: Creative Practice Through History and Material

Faculty: Susan Giles, Professor (Contemporary Practices) and Amy Yoes, Professor, Adjunct (Fiber and Material Studies)
Dates: January 3–January 17, 2027*
*Dates are subject to change
Credits: 3 cr Studio
Course level: Undergraduate and Graduate 
Location: Siena and Florence, Italy

Siena is a hill town in Tuscany that was first settled by the Etruscans in 900–400 BC. It reached its peak as a political, economic, and artistic center in the Medieval period from 1150 to 1350 AD. During those years, it prospered, enjoying a “golden” era as an independent republic with a representative government, where enlightened trade and economic philosophies fostered modern banking practices and distinctive styles of painting, sculpture, and architecture developed in the service of aesthetic pleasure and civic pride. Today, Siena’s historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the city’s art, medieval architecture, museums, archives, university, and cuisine are internationally renowned.

This course will use the archival and cultural resources there to give artists greater insight into how historical interests and study can serve as a catalyst for their own growth and work as contemporary artists and thinkers. We will be interacting with historians, curators, art and architecture conservators, scientists, and ordinary Sienese to understand how the experience of living, working, and creating in a place with hundreds of years of vibrant historical and cultural traditions affects contemporary identity and expression.

Summer 2027 

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Queering London: Fashion, Sex, and Music at the Edge

Faculty: Kirin Wachter-Grene, Associate Professor (Liberal Arts) and Caroline Bellios, Associate Professor, Adjunct (Fashion Design)
Dates: May 31–June 16, 2027*
*Dates are subject to change
Credits: 3 cr Studio and/or 3 cr Liberal Arts (3000 level)
Course level: Undergraduate and Graduate 
Location: London and surrounding areas, United Kingdom

This course addresses the rise of queer and dark alternative subcultures (i.e. New Romantics, punk and post-punk, goth, industrial, etc.) in London public life from the 1970s through the 1990s. Through fashion, art, and music, formerly marginalized or ignored communities (which were not always as white as popular history suggests) shattered gender norms, labor and class conventions, and sexual and racial expression. In so doing, young, often working class people gained local and global exposure, forever changing and influencing the cultural zeitgeist around the world. This course will challenge students to critically consider how a backwards glance at the no longer present illuminates queer and creative horizons we have yet to reach. The class begins with a pre-trip visit to the Museum of Post-Punk and Industrial Music in Chicago, featuring a guided tour with industrial music pioneer and record label owner Martin Atkins. We will then guide students to sites in London and surrounding areas (including Manchester, Cornwall, and Coventry), prioritizing the history, humor, and transgression of British subcultures, that will include The Fashion & Textile Museum; The British Library; Brixton Village; Highgate Cemetery; Museum of Transology; Museum of Youth Culture; Victoria & Albert Museum; Dennis Severs House; Jane Wildgoose Memorial Library; Museum of Witchcraft and Magic; talks with curators about the fashion, music, and culture of London; and historical queer sites and venues, music venues, fashion venues, and galleries.

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Burren Studio Residency

Faculty: Peter Power, Associate Professor (Printmedia) and Paola Cabal, Associate Professor, Adjunct (Painting and Drawing)
Dates: June 5–June 26, 2027*
*Dates are subject to change
Credits: 3 cr Studio (3000 level)
Course level: Undergraduate and Graduate 
Location: Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, Ireland

This three-week studio residency will meet in the studio facilities of the Burren College of Art (burrencollege.ie), an art school located on the grounds of a 16th century castle on the spectacular West Irish coast. This course is designed on an open studio or residency model. Students will have the freedom and time to focus on and develop independent projects, detached from the conventions and constraints of traditional curriculum. Each student will be provided with studio space for the entire residency, enabling full engagement with their work, free from distraction. Faculty will be on campus every day and will be available to meet with students for individual discussion and critiques. There will also be group critiques as well as numerous informal sessions and an end-of-residency exhibition on campus. Presentations will be given on Irish music (from traditional to post-punk), Irish literature, and history (from Stone Age to Post-Colonial, Post-Celtic Tiger). Field trips, including an overnight trip to the Arran Islands and explorations of local, ruggedly beautiful landscape, will provide an expansive and rare environment in which to work.

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Zeitgeist, Dada in Germany

Faculty: Oliver Sann, Professor (Photography) and Beate Geissler, Professor (UIC)
Dates: June 17—July 1, 2027*
*Dates are subject to change
Credits: 3 or 6 cr Studio (3000 level)
Course level: Undergraduate and Graduate 
Location: Germany: Munich, Loheland, Kronach, Weimar Bauhaus, Berlin

Dada provokes, Dada questions, and Dada continues to inspire—even a century later. What began as a radical response to the horrors of World War I evolved into a transformative force, sparking movements like Surrealism and Conceptual Art. Among its pioneers were visionaries such as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia.

This immersive two-week study trip embarks in Munich, tracing the vibrant spirit of the 1920s along the Dada pathway to Loheland—a fascinating, notoriously under-appreciated, female-run counterpart to the Bauhaus. From there, the journey leads to the Bauhaus itself, followed by a stay at the medieval castle Veste Rosenberg. Finally, we arrive in Berlin for an exhilarating week interwoven with studio work, curated visits, and creative exploration. The trip culminates in a public exhibition at the Galerie Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin’s Mitte district, showcasing the participants' artistic creations from this transformative adventure.

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NYC: Poetics and Praxis of the City

Low-Residency MFA Study Trip

Faculty: Aliza Shvarts, Director of Low-Residency MFA and Assistant Professor (Performance) and Daniel R. Quiles, Associate Professor (Art History, Theory and Criticism)
Dates: May 18–June 4, 2027*
May 18–19: Virtual seminars 
May 20–29: NYC in-person class
June 4: Virtual seminar 
*Dates are subject to change
Credits: 3 cr EITHER Studio or Art History
Course level: Low-Residency MFA cohort, Graduate
Location: New York City, New York

As a graduate degree program that brings together artists of all disciplines, LRMFA’s curriculum is scaffolded through the concept of “poetics,” from the Greek poiema, meaning “a made thing.” This Low-Residency MFA study trip applies this lens to the city of New York, exploring how artists make things conceptually, materially, and relationally in the city. The course begins with two online sessions (May 18–19) that frame the conceptual questions and discursive frameworks of the trip. Then over nine intensive days in May spent in New York (May 20–30), we will explore the multiple forms of poetics and praxis employed by visual artists, performers, writers, curators, and other cultural workers. The course culminates in a final online session (June 4) where students will present a final project based on the trip. The class will visit a vast number of artists’ studios, non-profit spaces, performance venues, residencies, commercial galleries, and notable museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, Asia Society, and the Leslie- Lohman Museum of Art. Team-taught by Low-Res Director artist/theorist Aliza Shvarts and Low-Res summer faculty critic/art historian Daniel Quiles, both of whom have lived and worked in New York, the class will benefit from numerous “behind-the-scenes” opportunities and will include structured daily discussions.