Chitra Ganesh: Alex Katz Chair in Painting Artist Talk

Thursday, May 20, 2021, 9:30 - 10:30pm

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Portrait of Chitra Ganesh seated in front of one of her works

Chitra Ganesh, the Spring 2021 Alex Katz Chair in Painting, will give an artist's talk at UCLA. Register online.

Chitra Ganesh is a Brooklyn-based visual artist whose work in drawing, painting and installation delves into the poetics of cultural imagination and memory, extending our understandings of LGBTQ and Women’s histories. Further, her work as an artist informs her long standing activism for social justice. These examples of working across disciplines and social engagement are critical values of education in The Cooper Union School of Art.

Ganesh graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, and received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has been exhibited widely across the U.S., Europe, and South Asia. Her works are held in prominent public collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. Ganesh's site specific QUEERPOWER FACADE commission at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, A city will share her secrets if you know how to ask, is on view through October 2021 and her work will also be on view in the exhibition Born in Flames at the Bronx Museum opening on April 28.

The Alex Katz Chair was founded in 1999 by the School of Art with generous support by alumnus Alex Katz. The Chair provides a one-semester visiting professorship to a distinguished artist working in the fields of Painting and Drawing.

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.