Celebrating Miyoko Ito

The Renaissance Society hosts a public event celebrating the artist Miyoko Ito, coinciding with the release of a new monograph, Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts, published by Pre-Echo Press. This is the first large book dedicated to the life and work of Ito, who made a career in Chicago and who had a retrospective exhibition at the Ren in 1980, which was accompanied by a smaller catalogue. The event will include an introduction by the book’s editor, Jordan Stein, clips from a 1978 Ito interview with Video Data Bank, and a series of short presentations by local artists and curators related to Ito’s work including Mari Eastman, Magalie Guérin, Nolan Jimbo, Caroline Kent, John Pittman, and Lynne Warren, culminating in an informal panel discussion, culminating in an informal panel discussion.

Presented in collaboration with Pre-Echo Press.

Participants:

Mari Eastman holds an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Smith College. She has exhibited most recently at The Green Gallery in Milwaukee and Goldfinch Gallery in Chicago. Her work has been reviewed in Frieze and The New York Times among others. Eastman lives and works in Chicago and is on the faculty of The University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts.

Magalie Guérin is a French-Canadian painter based in Marfa, Texas. She graduated with an MFA from SAIC in 2011 and, for the last decade, has been primarily represented by Corbett vs Dempsey in Chicago.

Nolan Jimbo is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where he has organized exhibitions and performances featuring the work of Miyoko Ito, Gregory Bae, Devin T. Mays, and Tanya Lukin Linklater. His forthcoming projects include the first solo museum exhibition and catalogue dedicated to Kenzi Shiokava.

Caroline Kent (born 1975) is an American visual artist based in Chicago, best known for a painting practice that explores the interplay between language and translation.

John Pittman was born in Detroit in 1948 and graduated from Kenyon College (BA) in 1970. He graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA) in 1973 and was represented by The Phyllis Kind Gallery from 1974 until 1982. He has lived in suburban Chicago for 45 years and he has been represented by Regards Gallery, Chicago since 2016.

Jordan Stein is a curator and writer based in San Francisco. He is also the author of Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo’s Estocada & Other Pieces (Soberscove, 2021). In 2017, he founded Cushion Works, an exhibition space in the Mission District dedicated to the presentation of critical and often overlooked artworks, histories, and ideas. He has independently organized exhibitions at venues such as Yale Union, Artists Space, San Francisco City Hall, The Glass House, Matthew Marks Gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, where he formerly served as Curator of Special Projects, as well as at BAMPFA. From 2016-2022 he was a curator at KADIST, San Francisco.

Lynne Warren is a retired Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago curator who specialized in examining Chicago’s art history through exhibitions such as “Art in Chicago, 1945-1995” and books such as H.C. Westermann Catalogue Raisonné and Alternative Spaces: A History in Chicago.