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During this fascinating expedition into the nature of time itself, many of the world’s experts on mythology, alchemy, astrology, anthropology, and ancient history; Jose Arguelles, Gregg Braden, Riane Eisler, Terence McKenna, Alberto Villoldo, and Jay Weidner are interviewed. They discuss topics such as the shift of the ages, the galactic alignment,...

Times of uncertainty can create obstacles for artists and designers; they also present opportunities for new ways of thinking, making, and envisioning. This course will provide both first-time and more experienced artists with prompts to inspire their art practice while navigating and reflecting on our current moment. A prompt is a starting point...

Lectures in Photography is presented by the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Photography Department of Columbia College Chicago. Corey Keller is curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Jennifer Blessing is senior curator of photography at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Throughout her career, she has curated many photography-based exhibitions, including Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video (2014), Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective (2012), and Francesca Woodman (2012). ...

Using photography, testimony, and archive, Diana Matar explores the controversial question of how beauty can be used in the depiction of power and violence. Speaking about her long-term projects Evidence and This Violent Land, Matar will discuss the practicalities of her research methods and explore how photography can respond to history and our contemporary...

Coping with Climate Change: How Plants and People Respond to Our Rapidly Changing World Can our forests cope with the impacts of climate change? Can human communities find hope and resilience to act and adapt? Grab a drink at the bar (one is included in the price of the program) and join us for an evening of science and inspiration with special guest...

Lectures in Photography is presented by the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Photography Department of Columbia College Chicago. Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, cultural producer, and trans woman who breaks down the way we think about gender, sexuality, and seeing. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally in museums,...

Since 1991, Mark Sealy has served as director of Autograph ABP, the Association of Black Photographers, based in Shoreditch, London. He has written for a number of international photography publications, including Foam Magazine (Amsterdam), Aperture (New York), and in 2002, published Different, a book project focused on photography and identity....

This is a one time FREE course. John F. Kennedy was a voracious reader and he put his reading to work in his speeches. His favorite quote was from Dante: “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” This lecture traces Kennedy’s deployment of this quote in different political contexts,...

This is a one time FREE course Full Course Title: Open Tables: Restaurants and Reform in Early Twentieth-Century Chicago In the years between the end of the Civil War and the repeal of the 18th Amendment, Chicago became “a city of restaurants,” as a 1901 Tribune article put it. However, there was a murky legal and cultural line between the saloon/tavern...

Connect or rediscover with the influences of contemporary art, focusing on four major painters: Monet, van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse, and their influences. View their work, and we’ll discuss ideas related to how their focus on light, color and space transformed art from realism to abstraction.

Petcoke: Tracing Dirty Energy features MoCP commissioned works by artists in response to the environmental and public health impact of petcoke, a dust-like waste product containing carbon, toxic heavy metals, and other dangerous compounds resulting from oil refining processes in the Chicago region and beyond.  In addition to photography,...

Artist Eleanor Spiess-Ferris’s works of art pull their inspiration from a variety of sources, including Symbolist and Surrealist artists. Eleanor will give a brief tour of her retrospective, Daphne's Sister, discussing her influences, and then will lead two to three Surrealist and Symbolist parlor games, examining how Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and...