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.
Norman Teague: Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series
Tuesday, February 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 designer Norman Teague followed by an audience Q&A.
Norman Teague’s (MFA 2016) overarching goal extends beyond the mere act of design; it is a mission to rectify the narratives of design that falter with gaps, omissions, and oversights. His work seeks to reintegrate the history and ongoing contributions of foundational Black labor, Black craftsmanship, and Black design into our collective cultural identity. In this pursuit, Teague engages in a thoughtful dialogue with overlooked figures such as Chuck Harrison, the trailblazing African American head of design for Sears Roebuck. Harrison's legacy, marked by the creation of more than 750 products integral to post-war American consumer life, including iconic items like Craftsman power tools and the beloved Viewmaster, serves as a source of inspiration and connection for his pedagogy.
Teague endeavors to make his design practice visible and accessible to his immediate community. This involves strategic initiatives such as public installations in parks and contributions to festival design, igniting local conversations around the impact of design. While originating at a grassroots level, these conversations have a ripple effect, resonating nationally and globally.
In 2024–25, Teague curated Designer’s Choice: Jam Sessions, a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition reimagined iconic design objects through the lens of generative AI, cultural memory, and Black craft, creating new dialogues within the museum’s permanent collection and challenging the boundaries of design history.
Teague also participated in Everlasting Plastics, the 2023 United States pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. His work examined the extractive dynamic between the global North and South, in which exploited petroleum eventually returns to the South as ever-accumulating streams of plastic waste. Reinventing a method of extruding consumer plastic into colored coils inspired by Ghanaian Bolga and Agaseke basket weavings, Teague created vibrant vessel forms that elevate petrochemical detritus through craft, allowing them to be viewed as art companions to the age-old craft of basketry—simultaneously signaling an Afro-Futurist, dystopian aesthetic.
Teague is currently working with Dorian Sylvain to develop a pavilion for Anna and Frederick Douglass at a Chicago park recently gone through a name change from Jefferson Douglass Park to Anna and Frederick Douglass Park. Additionally, as the co-founder of blkHaUS studios alongside Fo Wilson, Teague completed a diverse range of projects in Chicago and Nigeria, catering to clients ranging from Solange Knowles to the Museum of Contemporary Art. He is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago’s School of Design.
Presented in partnership with SAIC Alumni Engagement
Image Credit: Norman Teague
HOW NORMAN TEAGUE REIMAGINES THE WORLD OF FURNITURE DESIGN
J. Howard Rosier | SAIC Magazine | Fall 2025
Norman Teague Teams Up With A.I. to Fill Gaps in MoMA’s Catalogue
Eric Mutrie | Azure Magazine | April 24, 2025
Show Up and Play
Paul Galloway | MoMA Magazine | October 17, 2024
Norman Teague reimagines MoMA’s design collection
Brooke Hopper | Adobe Blog | October 10, 2024
Reverse Imagination: Norman Teague Designs with “A Love Supreme”
Vasia Rigou | New City Design | February 16, 2024
I Rarely Saw People Who Looked Like Me: Norman Teague on Community, Chicago, and Creating with Your Hands
Jake Yuzna | Walker Art Museum | January 9, 2024
On the Record with Norman Teague
Dlisah Lapidus | The Oberlin Review | February 17, 2023
7 Questions for Norman Teague on Using Design to Effect Change and Finding Inspiration in Community
Artnet Gallery Network | Artnet | February 1, 2023
Norman Teague displays prototype of Douglass monument in Chicago
Ben Dreith | dezeen | February 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVE: CHANGEMAKERS | HOW TO X
Vasia Rigou | International Interior Design Association | September 27, 2022
Redesigning The Silver Room community space in Chicago
Ellie Stathaki | Wallpaper* | July 29, 2022
Listen to Norman Teague’s JAM SESSION [Spotify Playlist]
MoMA Magazine | October 7, 2024
Norman Teague [Podcast Episode]
Creative Direction | Season 1, ep. 2 | August 13, 2020 | Please note this podcast does not provide transcripts
Norman Teague on Cultural Storytelling Through Design [Podcast Episode]
Clever | Episode 225 | August 26, 2025 | Please note this podcast does provide transcripts
Objects: USA 2024
by
R & Company's landmark triennial exhibition and accompanying publication, Objects: USA, returns in 2024, featuring 56 makers from across the United States whose works blur the traditionally understood boundaries of art, design, and craft. The exhibition's curators and book authors, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy and Kellie Riggs, have organized these works into archetypes that engage with makers' intentions and driving interests rather than categories related to medium, proposing a new conceptual framework for understanding twenty-first-century objecthood. The book includes a preface by Evan Snyderman and Zesty Meyers, an introduction by Glenn Adamson, an essay by the authors, and richly illustrated profiles for each of the featured artists.
Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect
by
A collaboration of artists and writers commemorates a powerful symbol for social justice and freedom on Chicago's South Side The Wall of Respect, a work of public art created in 1967 at the corner of Forty-third Street and Langley Avenue on Chicago's South Side, depicted Black leaders in music, literature, politics, and sports. The Wall sparked a nationwide mural movement, provided a platform for community engagement, and was a foundational work of the Black Arts Movement. There is no longer any physical indication of its existence, but it still needs to be remembered. Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect argues against making a monument of it, or of other historically significant events, in the formal language of grandness and permanence. Instead, Romi Crawford proposes the concept of "fleeting monuments," asking a range of artists and writers to realize antiheroic, nonstatic, and impermanent strategies for commemoration. The result is a collection of "fleeting monuments" of poetry, photography, essays, artworks, and performance that invites readers to enact the history of the Wall of Respect on their own terms. Through the intimate and portable format of a book, Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect recognizes and pays tribute to the Wall while proposing new strategies for commemoration and public memory that inspire us today as we endeavor to preserve the recent murals, installations, and other forms of public art created to support racial justice. Contributors: Miguel Aguilar, Abdul Alkalimat and the Amus Mor Project, Wisdom Baty, Lauren Berlant, Mark Blanchard, Bethany Collins, Darryl Cowherd, D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem, Julio Finn, Maria Gaspar, Theaster Gates, Wills Glasspiegel, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Stephanie Koch, Kelly Lloyd, Damon Locks, Haki Madhubuti, Faheem Majeed, Nicole Mitchell Gantt, Naeem Mohaiemen, K. Kofi Moyo, Robert E. Paige, Kamau Patton, Jefferson Pinder, Cauleen Smith, Rohan Ayinde, solYchaski, Norman Teague, Jan Tichy, Visiting Val Gray Ward, Mechtild Widrich, and Bernard Williams.
Norman Teague—Jam Sessions
Norman Teague invites us to reimagine the past by moving beyond "good modern design" as defined by institutions. Drawing inspiration from artists and designers traditionally excluded from museums, he offers a reinterpretation of design history. Previously on view October 10, 2024 – May 11, 2025.
Everlasting Plastics
Everlasting Plastics is an exhibition that investigates our relationship with plasticity—both as a metaphor and material construction. Previously on view March 9 – July 21, 2025.
A Love Supreme
A Love Supreme, a solo exhibition by Norman Teague inspired by legendary jazz musician John Coltrane, uses Coltrane’s album “A Love Supreme” as a personal, cultural, and spiritual touchstone to consider design influences from his life-long home in Chicago. Previously on view January 20 – April 28, 2025
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).