The Spring 2026 Graduate Art guest lecture series, organized by Jack Bankowsky and Jason Smith.

Isabelle Graw presents Sterling Ruby

This event is free and open to the public. RSVPs are not required.

Sterling Ruby (b. 1972) is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist whose expansive practice includes painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, collage, video, and installation. Recognized for its sustained engagement with the complexities of contemporary life, Ruby’s art explores themes of violence, confinement, societal pressures, and transformation through a rigorous focus on material and artistic process. Often organized in series, Ruby’s work compiles fragments and gestures drawn from his surroundings and personal experience, transforming the everyday into reflections on cultural tension and change.

A distinguished ArtCenter alumnus, Ruby’s work is held in museum collections worldwide and has been featured in solo exhibitions at institutions including MAMO – Centre d'art de la Cité Radieuse, Marseille, France (2025); Sogetsu Foundation, Tokyo, Japan (2023); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida (2019); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX (2019); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2017).

Isabelle Graw is a professor of art history and art theory at the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste (Städelschule) Frankfurt am Main, who is currently based in Berlin. She founded the journal, Texte zur Kunst, in 1990 with Stefan Germer (†) and has both conceived and co-edited 119 issues to date. In 2003 she co-founded the Institut für Kunstkritik at the Städelschule with Daniel Birnbaum.

Graw is the author of High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture (Sternberg Press, 2009), The Love of Painting: Genealogy of a Success Medium (MIT Press, 2018), In Another World: Notes 2014-2017 (MIT Press, 2020), Three Cases of Value Reflection: Ponge, Whitten, Banksy (MIT Press, 2021), and On the Benefits of Friendship (MIT Press, 2023). She has coedited publications including (with Daniel Birnbaum): Canvases and Careers Today: Criticism and Its Markets (Sternberg Press, 2008), Thinking Through Painting: Reflexivity and Agency Beyond the Canvas (MIT Press, 2012), Kim Gordon’s Is It My Body? Selected Texts (MIT Press, 2014); and Jutta Koether: f (Sternberg Press, 2015); (with Ewa Lajer-Burcharth): Painting Beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-Medium Condition (MIT Press, 2015); and (with Christoph Menke), The Value of Critique: Exploring the Interrelations of Value, Critique, and Artistic Labour (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

Image: Installation view of SPECTERS TOKYO (2023); Photo: Kenji Takahashi

See the full Spring 2026 Seminar schedule here.

Support for this series is generously provided by the following: Jack Shear, Brenda R. Potter, Brendan Dugan, Lisson Gallery, Beth Rudin DeWoody, BLUM, Hannah Hoffman, David Kordansky, and Jeffrey Deitch.

ArtCenter's Graduate Art program is based on intensive studio practice and rigorous academic coursework. The program is distinguished by its low faculty-to-student ratio that provides students with the attention and feedback they need to refine and achieve their artistic goals. Faculty and students are artists working in all genres—film, video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and installation. A significant number of alumni have achieved national and international acclaim and often return to share their insights and expertise as visiting faculty and guest lecturers.