Visiting Artists Program (VAP) Resource Guides

Pablo Helguera (BFA 1993) is a New York–based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art, and performance. Helguera’s work focuses on a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory, and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances, and written fiction. His work as an educator has usually intersected his interest as an artist. This intersection is best exemplified in his project, The School of Panamerican Unrest, a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, making 40 stops in between. Covering almost 20,000 miles, it is considered one of the most extensive public art projects on record as well as a pioneering work for the new generation of artworks regarded under the area of socially engaged art.

His musical composition “Endingness” has been performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Helguera has exhibited or performed at venues such as the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the 8th and 11th Havana Biennials; PERFORMA, New York; Manifesta 11, Zurich; Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires; and many others. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of grants from Creative Capital, Art Matters, and Franklin Furnace. In 2011, he was named winner of the International Award for Participatory Art of the Region Emilia-Romagna in Italy. Helguera has worked since 1991 in a variety of contemporary art museums, including as head of public programs at the education department of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1998–2005) and as director of adult and academic programs at MoMA, New York (2007–20). He has organized close to 1000 public events in conjunction with nearly 100 exhibitions. In 2010, he was appointed pedagogical curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which took place in September 2011. He is currently assistant professor of Arts and Entrepreneurship at the College of Performing Arts at the New School in New York.

He is the curator of the exhibition Collection in Conversation with Pablo Helguera at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago on view August 2, 2025–July 5, 2026. He is the author of many books, including Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011), The Parable Conference (2014), and A Journal of the Year of the Pharmacy (2021). He writes a weekly column titled Beautiful Eccentrics.

Presented in partnership with SAIC Alumni Engagement

Pablo Helguera. Photo: Lorena Marrón

Artist Website

Pablo Helguera's Website

Gallery Representation

Galeria Enrique Guerrero

Socially engaged art, social practice: an interview with Pablo Helguera
Margaret MacNamidhe | Journal of Visual Art Practice | October 11, 2024
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login

Exhibit at Arte Americas letting you engage with Spanish literature
Elisa Navarro | ABC 30 | June 18, 2024

Playing in Museums with Pablo Helguera
Rebecca Uchill | BmoreArt | February 7, 2024

Appreciation: Often spurned by the contemporary art world, Fernando Botero made meaningful art
Pablo Helguera | Los Angeles Times | September 19, 2023
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login

Hidden inside the Vincent Price Art Museum is a real-deal Spanish-language bookshop
Carolina A. Miranda | Los Angeles Times | April 1, 2023

Collectors Have an Ethical Responsibility to Keep the Art Market Fair. Here Are 8 Key Rules to Hold Them Accountable
Pablo Helguera | artnet | February 23, 2022

'Walking Through His Mind': Objects of an Artist's Past at Fiterman Art Center
Carl Glassman | The Tribeca Trib | November 29, 2021

Dialogs: Pablo Helguera
Pablo Helguera | Painting in text | March 10, 2021

Beautiful Eccentrics
Beautiful Eccentrics is a weekly dispatch of letters, notes and marginalia on contemporary art from Pablo Helguera.

Collection in Conversation with Pablo Helguera
Curated by Helguera and the MCA’s team in response to the group’s discussions, the exhibition spans all three floors of the museum’s iconic stairwell galleries and explores themes that emerged during their conversations. On view August 2, 2025–July 5, 2026.

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).