2025-26 Penn Fine Arts Visiting Artist Lecture Series: R.H. Quaytman

The Weitzman Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute of Contemporary Art are pleased to present an artist lecture and presentation with Sondra Perry.

R. H. Quaytman was born in Boston, Ma. and currently lives and works in Guilford, Connecticut. She is best known for her painting practice which organized into chapters dating back to 2001. Quaytman studied at Bard College and at the Institut des Hautes É tudes en Arts Plastiques in Paris.
She received the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in 2001. Her works have been featured in Documenta 14, the 54th Venice Biennale, and the 2010 Whitney Biennial. Solo shows dedicated to her work have taken place at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Secession, Vienna; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Renaissance Society, Chicago, and other venues. Her most recent exhibition, Shé, Chapter 0.3, curated by Kitty Scott, was included in the 2025 Shanghai Biennial, Does the Flower Hear the Bee? in November. The Hieroglyphic, Chapter 0.4, opened at Frieze Masters, curated by Sheena Wagstaff, in London this past fall. A selection of paintings from iamb, Chapter 12 are presently being exhibited as part of the permanent collection at MoMA, NYC. Quaytman has authored two books discussing and showing every painting in every chapter. The first, Spine, was published in 2010 and covered the first twenty chapters, and the second Book, published in 2025 by the Glenstone Museum, covers Chapters 21 through 35.

R.H. Quaytman is a visual artist and occasional author. She is best known for her ongoing series of painting exhibitions which she conceives as one ongoing project, like chapters in a book. This method began in 2001 and includes a variety of historic and contemporary subjects pertaining to both the place the paintings are first shown and the history of painting. They will continue to the end. Quaytman’s work has been exhibited widely and written about in the Americas, Europe and most recently China.

This free public lecture is part of a series that gathers distinguished artists, activists, writers, and disruptors whose work engages with the social and cultural themes of our time.

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Host or Publisher Institute of Contemporary Art