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.
Katie Paterson Lecture: Tuesday, September 28, 12:00–1:30 p.m. CT
Click here to join via Zoom, Passcode: SAICVAP
This event will be live captioned by CART.
Join us live for a virtual lecture by artist Katie Paterson followed by an audience Q&A.
Katie Paterson (b. 1981 in Glasgow, Scotland) lives and works in Fife, Scotland, and is known for her multidisciplinary and conceptually driven work with an emphasis on nature, ecology, geology, and cosmology. Her artworks have involved broadcasting the sounds of a melting glacier live, mapping all the dead stars in the universe, compiling a slide archive of the history of darkness across the ages, custom-making a light bulb to simulate the experience of moonlight, burying a nano-sized grain of sand deep within the Sahara desert, and sending a re-cast meteorite back into space. Collaborating with scientists and researchers across the world, Paterson’s projects consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. Her artworks make use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic, and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment. Among the artist’s best known works are The Future Library Project (2014–2114), an ambitious, 100-year endeavor commissioned by the City of Oslo and the National Library of Oslo that will culminate in a 100-text anthology by leading authors, poets, and thinkers of the 21st century; Totality (2016), a mirrorball reflecting every solar eclipse seen from earth; and Hollow (2016), an immersive piece of architecture that brings together more than 10,000 unique tree species. Hollow was commissioned by the University of Bristol and made in collaboration with architects Zeller and Moye, and permanently installed in the historic Royal Fort Gardens. Combining a romantic sensibility with a research-based approach, conceptual rigor, and coolly minimalist presentation, her work collapses the distance between the viewer and the most distant edges of time and the cosmos.
Paterson has exhibited internationally, from London to New York, Berlin to Seoul, and her works have been included in major exhibitions at Tate Britain, London; Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2021); Turner Contemporary, Margate, United Kingdom (2019); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City (2017); Somerset House, London (2016); and FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon, France (2015). Paterson was the winner of the visual arts category of the South Bank Awards in 2014, was a recipient of the 2010–11 John Florent Stone fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art, served as the 2010–11 Leverhulme Artist in Residence in the astrophysics group at University College London, and is an honorary fellow of The University of Edinburgh.
Portrait credit: Katie Paterson at Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh. Copyright photograph by Tina Norris, 2018.
Artist's Website
Gallery Representation
Cupertino: Apple unveils plans for sculpture using sand from the world’s 58 deserts
Aldo Toledo | Mercury News | June 16, 2021
Katie Paterson, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Chris Sharratt | Sculpture Magazine | April 8, 2020
Art review: NOW | Katie Paterson, Darren Almond, Shona Macnaughton and Lucy Raven, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Susan Mansfield | The Scotsman | November 6, 2019
How to future-proof a work of art that will not be completed for 100 years
José Da Silva | The Art Newspaper | April 18, 2019
'I've breathed in some crazy things from outer space' – Katie Paterson's cosmic art
Patrick Barkham | The Guardian | January 28, 2019
Katie Paterson Invites UK Public to Build Sand Mountains
Ali Morris | dezeen | April 2, 2019
This Library Has New Books by Major Authors, but They Can’t Be Read Until 2114*
Merve Emre | T The New York Times Style Magazine | November 1, 2018
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
1000 Words: Katie Paterson and Margaret Atwood*
Lars Bang Larsen | Artforum | November 2014
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
2114, Future Library: A Conversation with Katie Paterson
Laura Leuzzi, Antonella Sbrilli | KronoScope, vol. 18 (1) | p.72-79 | April 2018
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Naming the Cosmos Death: On performance, astronomy and Katie Paterson's The Dying Star Letters
Felipe Cervera | Performance Research, vol.22 (5) | p.28-34 | July 4, 2017
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Artist Katie Paterson
Shock Waves [Podcast] | March 15, 2021 | Please note this podcast does not provide transcripts
A Place That Only Exists in Moonlight by 
Earth-Moon-Earth: Moonlight Sonata Reflected From the Surface of the Moon by IHME Helsinki Commission 2021 – Katie Paterson: To Burn, Forest, Fire
Katie Paterson was selected to create the second IHME Helsinki Commission in 2021, entitled To Burn, Forest, Fire.
The Future Library Project (2014–2114)
Conceived by Katie Paterson, The Future Library Project is an ambitious, 100-year endeavor commissioned by the City of Oslo and the National Library of Oslo that will culminate in a 100 text anthology by leading authors, poets, and thinkers of the 21st century.
The Earth Has Many Keys
Katie Paterson: The Earth Has Many Keys is the artist’s first exhibition in Iceland.
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).
