Get to know the work of a different Chicago-based thought leader each month.

Judith Russi Kirshner has been dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1997, where she also served as director of the School of Art and Design. Kirshner previously served as curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago from 1976 to 1980, at The Terra Museum of American Art from 1985 to 1987 and in the Art History Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Critic and curator, Kirshner lectures frequently on contemporary art and is a member of the Cultural Affairs Advisory Board of the City of Chicago as well as an advisory board member of numerous national and Chicago cultural organizations. She has served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts since 1980. At the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1978, Kirshner curated Matta-Clarke’s last public project, Circus on the Caribbean Orange. Recent lectures include “Arte Povera Portraits” at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, “The Art of Criticism, Carla Lonzi” at The Tate Museum in London and at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota, “Christina Ramberg” at the University of Richmond, and “Gordon Matta Clark” at the Royal Academy of Denmark.

Her most recent publications is an essay included in Wack! Art in the Feminist Revolution, 2007, on the Italian feminist artists Gina Pane, Carla Lonzi, Lea Vergine, and Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti. A contributor to Art in America and Artforum, Kirshner has also published and lectured on the work of Judy Ledgerwood, Tom Otterness, Dan Peterman, Gordon Matta-Clark, Cat Chow, Gary Simmons and Roni Horn.