2025 Art & Design Convocation Speaker Announced: Robyn Farrell

Robyn Farrell is Senior Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Kitchen in New York where she oversees the exhibition, performance, and publication program. Recent exhibitions include The Kitchen in Focus featuring Sheryl Sutton at 47 Canal (2024), Desire Inc. (2024) with Lynn Hershman Leeson and Patricia Domínguez's Tres Lunas Mas Abajo (Three Moons Below) (2024) as part of The Kitchen's Video Viewing (VVR) Program. From 2013-2023 she worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, most recently as Associate Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. Farrell served on the curatorial teams for over fifty exhibitions including Kara Walker: Rise Up Ye Mighty Race! (2013), Kemang Wa Lehulere: In All My Wildest Dreams (2016), and Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again (2019). She curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions during her tenure in Chicago, notably the 2021 exhibition with Barbara Kruger, THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU, the Chicago presentation of Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well (2019), Christine Sun Kim: Cues on Point (2023), and Maren Hassinger: This Is How We Grow (2023). Farrell has contributed to publications and artist monographs, spoken widely on contemporary and time-based media, and is an internationally recognized scholar on the work of German filmmaker and video art pioneer Gerry Schum, including his landmark art on television broadcasts such as Land Art (1969). Farrell holds a BFA in Art History from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and an MA in Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has served as a visiting lecturer and moderator for the Gene Siskel Film Center.