The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
Raven Chacon: Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor
Tuesday, October 17, 6:00–7:30 p.m. CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.
Join us for a lecture by Raven Chacon followed by an audience Q&A.
Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, and a member of Postcommodity from 2009 to 2018, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; San Francisco Electronic Music Festival; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Vancouver Art Gallery; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Borealis Festival, Seattle; SITE Santa Fe; Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; Ende Tymes Festival, New York; The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Biennial, New York; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; Carnegie International, and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on more than 80 releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from The LA Times, the New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named the 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.
Since 2004, he has mentored more than 300 Native high school composers in writing new string quartets for the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital Award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022), and the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022).
Established in 2006 by a generous gift from Bill and Stephanie Sick, this distinguished visiting professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC.
Portrait credit: Raven Chacon. Photo: Neal Santos
Artist Website
The Art of the Score
Mark Tiarks | The Santa Fe New Mexican | March 3, 2023
Composer Raven Chacon Carves Out a Space in San Francisco
Emily Wilson | Classical Voice | December 5, 2022
Raven Chacon on For Zitkála–Šá, Graphic Notation, and Identity
Tristan McKay | I Care if You Listen | August 16, 2022
Raven Chacon, Loud and Clear
Marya Errin Jones | Hyperallergic | June 30, 2022
Meet Raven Chacon, the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize for music
Tom Huizenga | NPR | May 10, 2022
The Pulitzer Prize Winner That Emerged Out of a Time of Quietness
Javier C. Hernández | New York Times | May 9, 2022
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Raven Chacon: Solos
e-Flux Podcasts | June 20, 2023 | Please note this podcast does not provide transcripts
For Zitkála-Šá. by 
Whitney Biennial 2022 by 
Hungry Listening by 
The Jeweled Isle by 
Much Wider Than a Line by 
Notations 21 by Raven Chacon: Three Songs at the Harwood Museum of Art
Three Songs (February 24 – July 7, 2024) brings together three of Raven Chacon’s projects that pay tribute to Indigenous women through sound, video, and visual work.
Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies (June 16, 2023 – January 29, 2024) explores the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music.
Raven Chacon: While Hissing at Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson
While Hissing (March 24 – December 17, 2023) is an exhibition by artist, performer, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon that celebrates sound as a medium for resistance and connection.
Raven Chacon: Live from Alcatraz at BAMPFA
Raven Chacon debuts a new sound work on Alcatraz as part of the exhibition Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration (September 3 – December 11, 2022) at BAMPFA. The work is a sonic meditation on the histories of the island.
Raven Chacon: Silent Choir (Standing Rock) (2017–22) at the 2022 Whitney Biennial
Artwork description and audio guide.
Still Life No. 3: Raven Chacon at the Heard Museum
Still Life No. 3 (July 5 – November 3, 2019) presents a singular work of the same title comprised of sound installation, timed light, and text. The work retells the Diné Bahaneʼ, the Navajo story of creation and emergence into the current world.
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977–98).
