Undergraduate Overview

The life of an artist is largely self-directed and self-managed. Reflecting on our current gig economy, we know that artists have always been considered the original gig workers tasked with managing an active studio practice, alongside multiple jobs and projects. DIY: Self-Management for Artists looks to the inherent management tools embodied in artistic practice, as a theoretical and practical framework to apply toward managing a sustainable and purposeful professional and personal life. This class will explore listening and critical feedback, project development and management, marketing and branding strategy, strategic planning, negotiation, building and maintaining networks, and portfolio development.

Readings will vary, and include articles and excerpts from: How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, The Art of Gathering: How we Meet and Why it Matters by Priya Parker, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek, Critical Response Process: A Method for Getting Useful Feedback on Anything you Make from Dance to Dessert by Liz Lerman; The Artist?s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love by Jackie Battenfield, Making: Your Life as an Artist by Andrew Simonet, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists by Sharon.Loudon

Course work will vary but will include readings and critical writing responses throughout the semester, the development of a written project scope, regular class presentations and a final project on one aspect of a student's portfolio.

This course will examine the many issues and contexts surrounding what it means to be an artist today. We will consider the multiple positions of the artist in contemporary culture, their relationships to their audience(s) and to the market, and closely examine major themes and strategies in contemporary art-making. Students will further investigate and articulate their own practice and its relationship to larger creative and cultural structures to contextualize their own goals and desires for their work. What does it mean to be an artist at this moment in time? This is the fundamental and critical question of the course, and as the course proceeds, will yield a broad and diverse range of responses.

We will be reading excerpts from Ways of Seeing, John Berger; ?What Art Is and Where it Belongs,? Paul Chan; and Carter Ratcliff. Additional readings and videos will be topical, and come from current sources as the New York Times, ArtNews, Artforum, The Guardian, Aperture, the NewYorker, Interview Magazine, Artnet, Hyperallergic, the Observer and Jsonline.

The class consists of discussions of current readings and videos on contemporary artists, exhibitions, and themes, visits to gallery and museums, guest speakers, and student presentations. Each student will lead a discussion on selected contemporary artists and specific readings from our class syllabus. Students present their work at the beginning of the semester and the end, create an artist statement, artist bio, and a Powerpoint presentation on their work in relation to the artists and topics discussed in class. This class is driven by discussions and each student's full participation is expected.

This course will focus on theoretical and practical aspects of exhibition design, including construction aesthetics, community engagement, and the politics of display. Topics covered range from lighting and human perception to voice and authority in museum labels. These issues will be explored via individual site visits to established and alternative exhibit spaces, where students will critique current installations, as permitted by Covid restrictions. Guest speakers from major museums will supplement class lectures and discussions. We will adopt a critical stance in exploring the relationship between people, objects, and space in this environment.

In this course, students will analyze and report on art world and cultural ecologies and explore professional work opportunities while reflecting on their current creative and scholarly interests. The course will lead to an expanded understanding of professional opportunities and the tools to pursue them while starting to identify each of our strengths and interests in identifying possible pathways for our lives that include (work life - studio life - love - finances - passion - family - etc...). Toward the end of the semester, as a way to bring into practice what was covered in the course, each student will participate in a class exhibition/presentation of current work and a portfolio of professional presentation materials to support one of the following (grant or job application and an exhibition/project proposal).

Readings will address issues in the class and will include, 'GETTING YOUR SHIT TOGETHER: THE ULTIMATE BUSINESS MANUAL FOR EVERY PRACTICING ARTIST', ART/WORK (Revised + Updated) by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber, and selections from the follwing books; 'Living and sustaining a Creative Life by Sharon Louden, 'The Creative Habit: a Practical Guide' by Twyla Tharp, among others.

The deliverables in this class will include the following: 1) An illustrated verbal presentation of your current creative portfolio. 2) Research on one of the visitors to the class. 3) Class Exhibition including the entire class in an On Campus Space. 4) Printed and Digital Professional Portfolio.

This seminar introduces and develops professional practices for students pursuing a freelance career in comics, illustration, animation, or the like. By creating promotional material, portfolios, contracts, and invoices, students learn how to market themselves as freelance artists. In tandem with learning the ins and outs of industry standards, they have access to insight and advice from a variety of guest speakers whose careers and professional paths have paved the way for future creators.

Readings will vary but typically include 'The Freelancer's Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Have the Career of Your Dreams- On Your Terms' by Sara Horowitz, 'The Graphic Artist Guild Pricing and Ethical Guidelines Handbook,' and 'Burn Your Portfolio' by Michael Janda.

Students will create, revise, workshop, and submit a variety of professional documents that culminate in a compendium over the course of the semester. These are all documents that will prove to be necessary for a freelancing career. There will be weekly responses to readings, and rotating guest speakers to provide in-sight on their professional journeys.

We all have something that we do to offset stress and practice care for the self, be it jogging, knitting, reading, or meeting with friends. Care is a radical action. This course will look at care for the individual and care for the community as a strategy for art-making in the studio. Students will discuss self-care strategies that work for them and bring those strategies into the studio. The culminating project will be presenting a plan of action for continued self-care at SAIC and beyond with concrete examples of these strategies at play in the student's studio work. Students will work on a series of small sample projects throughout the semester in preparation for a final presentation of a finished piece. We will look to alternative models of evaluation and build our own unique dynamic approach to critiquing these pieces.

Students will practice self-care by participating in the class reading group to discuss texts including All About Love by Bell Hooks, Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown, Conversation with Mike Kelley, Keith Harring's Journals, Eva Hesse's notes and more. Texts will be selected to best reflect the student's interests and studio practices. We will look at artists and practitioners who bring care into their work across disciplines including Shana Moulton (film and performance), Aram Han Sifuentes (craft and participation), H. Melt (poetry and writing), Adrian Piper (research) and more. Students will be asked to contribute significantly to an extended bibliography of care for the class to share beyond the Spring semester.

This course includes weekly text discussions, small group critiques on sample pieces and culminates in a full class critique of a self directed final project. Ideas for this project will be supported through individual meetings with the instructor and visiting guest self care experts.

This course will prepare students for developing project proposals in various contexts ranging from informal collaborations with artist run spaces to formal grant applications. We will focus not only the process of conceptualizing a project idea and persuasively organizing the necessary content around it, but also explore the pragmatic aspects of carrying it out and interfacing collaboratively with an art space, an institution, or other artists. In addition to workshopping the various elements needed for a hypothetical project, students will be required to conceptualize, propose and execute a proposal of some scale at the end of the semester to put into practice the skills and ideas explored in the course. In doing so, we will use the project proposal as a means to understand the broader ecosystem of the artworld and the different roles people play within them: artist, curator, programmer, institution, non-profit infrastructure, commercial and corporate factors, and more. Chicago?s landscape of artists, institutions and DIY spaces will provide ample case studies and first hand know-how for us to tap into as we build an understanding of the interrelationships between an artistic practice and the space within which it is presented or contextualized.

This interdisciplinary seminar introduces, deepens and extends writing skills and helps to develop concepts that can sustain, guide and propel artistic practice after graduation. Central to the class is the professional completion of two grant applications, followed by a mock jury event that simulates actual jurying procedure. In conjunction with the applications, students write artist statements and develop project proposals. We also discuss how the arts and the public intersect, whether in popular opinion, historic context or professional settings. This includes an assessment of the relations of artists and audiences, artists and administrators and curators, and artists and critics.

This course is a multidisciplinary seminar that will present strategies for developing and sustaining your own studio practice and help prepare you for life after art school. It will provide practical instruction in getting started on and succeeding with your career after graduation and help you gain a critical understanding of your own artwork or creative endeavor and it's relationship to the larger cultural moment. The student will have the opportunity to create a cohesive body of work or curatorial project specific to each individual student's interest. Additionally, we will examine art historical precedents, contemporary ideas and practices in the art world, and the role of the artist in contemporary culture.

The textbook for the class is Art/Work-Everything You Need to Know (and Do) as you Pursue your Art Career, Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber, in addition to readings from current sources, such as Artforum, Art News, New York Times, etc.

The student will propose a project that he or she will complete over the course of the semester (which can include preparation for the BFA Exhibition.)The class will include readings and discussions, individual presentations, writing an artist's statement, resume, and cover letter, press release and exhibition announcements, project proposal, and discussions with visiting artists and curators, gallery and museum visits, and class critiques. We will explore graduate school considerations, traditional and alternative strategies for exhibiting and self-promotion, developing an online presence, creating a support system and community, and earning a living as an artist. You will be also presenting your endeavors through at least one PowerPoint presentation.

This course will consider a continuum of policies, incentives, and governance models that support arts and culture in place. Students will support community goals by researching best practices in district- and community-scaled arts administration. In consultation with local stakeholders, students will assess community needs and develop models for local and regional arts support. The course will culminate with a presentation of findings to Arts Alliance Illinois leadership.
Partners include: Arts Alliance Illinois, Cook County, Selected communities, Legacy Consulting, Public Sphere Projects
Reading include Arnold Alanen and Robert Melnick, ¿Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America¿; Americans for the Arts, ¿AEP 6¿; Jeff Speck, ¿Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time.¿
Assignments will be both group driven and based upon individual research interests within the overarching topic and in relation to the partner/ client organization Arts Alliance Illinois. Students will prepare initial draft strategy proposal documentation as a group and then based upon review they will develop a specific part of a final project strategy document. While the work will stem from conversations with Arts Alliance Illinois as a 'client' the finished material will be presented 'as live' with the potential for adoption rather than as a live consequential proposal.

In this interdisciplinary studio-seminar, students will work with SITE Galleries and its archive. Founded in 1994, SITE, once known as the Student Union Galleries (SUGs), is a student-run organization at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for the exhibition of student work. SITE was created as a response to the lack of spaces on SAIC's campus to accommodate the display of student work. Since then, SITE has had the support of faculty advisors and staff and has supported the professional development of roughly 80 student staff members, produced over 260 exhibitions, and has served more than 850 student artists. For more details about SITE Galleries, visit the following link - https://sites.saic.edu/sitegalleries/#

This class will join the legacy celebration of SITE's 30th anniversary and will continue work with SITE's archive to support the efforts of bringing it to a publicly accessible stage while understanding the archival needs of the paper-based collection of ephemera, promotional materials and digital documentation. The class readings and course content will include material that addresses a range of contemporary approaches to archive management and mediation focusing on specific institutional examples alongside the work of practitioners in the field of archival management and research.

This course explores the field of contemporary art and its dynamic market. Money combines with other forms of capital as an engine at the heart of an expansive and globally-networked art world. From the ¿sacred¿ spaces of the museum or studio to the ¿profane¿ realms of commercial galleries, auction houses and fairs, we will learn how competing logics of culture and markets coalesce.
Drawing on a variety of readings, as well as field trips, guest lectures and case studies, we will examine the inter-related actors, institutions, and behaviors that drive and, sometimes, destabilize the art world¿s economic activity. This is an ecosystem of artists, dealers, advisors, collectors, activists, auction houses, museums, fairs, biennials, and commercial galleries. Through these introductions, we will better understand how different forms of capital¿social, cultural, and financial¿are prerequisites to influence and power in an art market that is at once an economy of information and objects.
With a focus on the present, but in the context of the last half century, readings will include texts from the point of view of economists, sociologists, artists, curators, critics, and historians. Students can expect to perform case studies on artists, particularly those who have achieved significant market success. Course work will vary, but typically include weekly reading responses, case studies, class presentations, and a final project or paper.

Processes in Arts Administration offers project-based engagement with timely and relevant developments in Arts Administration. Through an incubator model, students will have the opportunity to explore creative processes that take place as part of independent projects, or 'in the front of the house' and behind the scenes of arts organizations, elevating creativity in arts administration.
Course work will vary and may include researching, proposing and designing curatorial projects across media, programming supporting events for multiple audiences, and designing and publishing publicity, critical, and documentation materials in conjunction with projects.
Students will develop site specific projects at proposal, model, and prototype levels. Course outcomes will include presentations and documentation.

Effective management requires knowledgeable and thoughtful preparation and use of financial information. This course focuses on the most critical financial management concepts and skills. Topics include: principles of financial management and control; budget preparation; financial management and strategic planning; allocation and recovery of indirect costs; preparation and analysis of financial reports; and coping with cutbacks. Quantitative analysis is emphasized. Students develop the confidence and ability to produce budgets, set prices and undertake other financial tasks required of administrators.

Effective management requires knowledgeable and thoughtful preparation and use of financial information. This course focuses on the most critical financial management concepts and skills. Topics include: principles of financial management and control; budget preparation; financial management and strategic planning; allocation and recovery of indirect costs; preparation and analysis of financial reports; and coping with cutbacks. Quantitative analysis is emphasized. Students develop the confidence and ability to produce budgets, set prices and undertake other financial tasks required of administrators.

It is becoming increasingly clear that facilitating is a widely present practice across the arts. Facilitation draws on performance modalities, while also engaging more broadly with design, sculpture, music, language, and gaming in their intersections with co-operative, social and community building practices. Facilitation emerges in cross-fertilization with practitioners¿ experience as artists, and also as arts educators, therapists, mediators, and administrators, roles that already include designing and deploying communicative systems.
Activist and Applied theater practices have long pioneered facilitative work. Artist Shaun Leonardo's performance-based workshops are a recent example of a facilitating practice that is both participatory and generates works. Gabrielle Civil's Experiments in Joy are an example of facilitating collaboration and community expansion. Community organizing and urban planning in the work of Rick Lowe and Theaster Gates facilitate structural opportunity and socio-political discourse. Facilitation additionally draws on cognitive, social and political theory, mitigating economic and epistemic violence, reframing research methodology, enacting participatory sense-making, complicating narrative and translation, and more.
Participatory configurations outside of theaters, such as laboratories, workshops and interventions are becoming more common as integral parts of work with ideas, objects or performance, even as institutions may be grappling with how to accommodate them. Our course research, curatorial or artistic projects may explore the following questions: Who designs a facilitation process, and why? Which kind of experience goes into it? Which desire? Which cooperation? What is the role of a facilitator? Who agrees to participate in a facilitation setting, and why? How might we name or more precisely describe facilitating? Also, how is facilitating generative? Does it relate to game, play, and improvisation? Does it enhance creativity? Does it support organizing and institutional imagination? Can facilitation be embedded in an object, a structure, a notation, or an algorithm? How does it affect relations among humans? Which literatures and theories, which artistic practices are currently being articulated? What are predecessors?

This course will teach students to apply principles and practices in collections management. It is intended for those who wish to work in the technical area of museums and with collectors. Collections managers typically focus on registration methods in large museums, but in smaller museums, these professionals might hold simultaneous positions as curators and/or directors. In the for-profit arena registrars work in galleries, auction houses, shipping and insurance companies, with private collectors or own their own business. Students will be exposed to all areas of collection management, from acquisition (accessioning) to de-acquisition (deaccessioning), care for a variety of types of objects, and external influences such as storage, environmental influences, shipping and insurance, and valuation.

The main textbook will be Museum Registration Methods - the industry touchstone for collections managers. Timely articles and YouTube screenings will also be introduced with ongoing discussions of ?best practices? as illustrated by a variety of museum Collection Management Policies, Loan Agreements, and Artist Commission contracts.

Coursework will include in-class assignments, relevant readings and two projects.

The Management Studio is a space in which to explore 21st century management environments though a practice based investigation of contemporary organizational, project, and leadership models with an eye toward designing frameworks for the future. In addition to investigating so-called traditional management models, students will engage with current cultural management theory and practice around strategic planning, budgeting and capitalization, evaluation, communication strategy, digital communication, public relations, and fundraising (grant writing, individual donors, presentation skills).

A distinguishing element of this course is the project-based learning environment. Management Studio integrates skill building projects into the course work for the purpose of practicing and developing individual and groups strategies and approaches to managing change/adaptation and cultural programming; supporting and engaging creativity; leading complex environments; building and understanding networks and connectivity; navigating teamwork, collaboration, self-organization, and problem-solving; and developing innovation practice skills. The projects in the studio are developed with external and internal partners and engage a broad set of skill building opportunities. Students select projects based on interest and a broad set of skill development opportunities. Management Studio II focuses on skills building in the areas of strategy and planning; resource development; working with artists; evaluation and data management; and communication strategy. In addition to team projects, there will be opportunities to cultivate individual concepts.

The premise of this course is that participants will be active leaders in shaping the future of cultural/arts management. As such, the course invites broad and active participation and preparation for every class meeting. As a ?hands on? examination of management practice and theory, students are urged to critically engage with the material and to participate in class discussions, projects, presentations and debates. Each student will work on an ongoing project(s) in addition to class preparation to include reading, discussion and presentation. The willingness and ability to collaborate and continue to develop skills in team-based work is an essential element of this course and a core component of grading. Class will generally be divided into two sections or function as workshops. The first section will include workshops and discussions/presentations The second section will include project report outs and project work/discussion. Each project will be developed through the workshops as real time case studies.

Law, Politics And The Arts provides the student with an understanding of the legal system and the political process as they relate to the arts. The first part of the course is a survey of the American legal system and laws affecting artists and arts organizations, including topics such as contracts, corporations, copyrights, and First Amendment issues. The second part of the course explores the philosophical foundations and the practical experience of the relationship of government and the political process to the arts, with an emphasis on advocacy and the skills to change the rules.

Readings will include judicial opinions, legislation, and excerpts from both fiction and non-fiction works. We will look at US Supreme Court rulings on the limits of the First Amendment as well as statutes protecting artists from hazardous paints and unscrupulous gallery owners. Readings are selected to be accessible to the general reader.

Assignments include weekly readings, both within the syllabus and those brought in by students readings, several quizzes, and two written assignments including a practical advocacy project.

With the introduction of new algorithmic tools and AI platforms to assist in grantmaking, how is the art and science of philanthropy evolving in this rapidly changing environment? This class will begin with an introduction to current philanthropic processes and topics, including participatory grantmaking, trust-based philanthropy, equitable giving, and the Fearless Fund Court ruling. The course will engage with the pros and cons of technology and human-centered approaches currently used in the sector. The class will grapple with the ethics of using digital tools to make grant decisions and monitor, evaluate, and learn from these disparate approaches. Coursework will include readings, screenings, presentations, and discussions with invited experts. The course will culminate in a series of grant panel reviews led by the class, where students will propose projects for funding that will be reviewed using different selection processes. This class will benefit those interested in seeking grants and philanthropic support for projects throughout their careers, regardless of previous background in arts administration.