Artist Talk | Riva Lehrer

Riva Lehrer is an artist, writer, and curator who focuses on the socially challenged body. She is best known for representations of people whose physical embodiment, sexuality, or gender identity have long been stigmatized.

Her work has been exhibited in venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego, Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, the Hirshhorn Museum, Yale University, the United Nations, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Arnot Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Frye Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center.

Awards include the 2024 Next Level Award, 3ARTS Foundation, 2020 Ford Foundation Fellowship, 2017 3Arts MacDowell Fellowship, 2014 Carnegie Mellon Fellowship, 2006 Wynn Newhouse Foundation Grant, Illinois Arts Council Grants, and National Endowment for the Arts Grant.

Lehrer’s memoir, Golem Girl (October 2020, One World/ Penguin Random House) won the London 2020 Barbellion Prize for Literature, the Midwest Authors Guild Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

She is represented by Regal Hoffman & Associates and by Zolla/Lieberman Gallery. Lehrer was a longtime faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is an instructor in Medical Humanities at Northwestern University.

Riva's work is currently on display at the Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture and the UT Downtown Gallery as part of Art, Movement, + DIsability: Transcending the Beauty Paradigm.

ASL interpretation will be available for this event.