Mel Chin will present his work in a public lecture, followed by a conversation with Tei Carpenter. The event will include an audience question-and-answer session.

Mel Chin is a conceptual artist known for a broad range of approaches to artmaking, including public initiatives realized through multidisciplinary, collaborative teamwork and works which enlist science as an aesthetic component to elaborate complex ideas. Throughout his career, Chin has developed a diverse portfolio of projects that employ artistic methods to not only address but intervene in urgent social, political, cultural, and environmental landscapes.

Chin’s artworks include:

• Fundred Project Prompted by a visit to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Chin initiated this campaign to raise awareness of childhood lead poisoning through the collaborative creation and dissemination of “Fundred Dollar Bill” drawings in schools, arts institutions, and civic settings across the country.
• In the Name of the Place In 1995, Mel Chin formed the GALA Committee, a collective which conducted a two-year, covert public art project on the television show Melrose Place, creating and inserting conceptual and often subversive props into the popular primetime soap opera.
• The Funk & Wag from A to Z This installation comprises 524 unique collages which re-edit images from Funk & Wagnall’s The Universal Standard Encyclopedia to pose contemporary and historical cultural critiques.

Since the 1980’s, Chin’s work has been exhibited in arts institutions around the world and installed across the United States through site-specific projects, from the ongoing Revival Field, a pioneering application of green remediation practices initiated in 1990, to Unmoored, a 2018 mixed reality experience located in Times Square that envisions a submerged future. Chin was one of the artists featured in the first season of the PBS Series Art of the 21st Century, focused on the theme of “consumption.” His 40-year survey exhibition at the Queens Museum, All Over the Place, was named the best art exhibition of 2018 by Hyperallergic. 

Chin is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the MacArthur Fellowship in 2019, his election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021, and the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2024. His work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. 

Following his presentation, Tei Carpenter will join Chin in discussion. Carpenter is the founding director of Agency—Agency, a New York City based architectural design practice specializing in cultural and public projects. In parallel to design work, Carpenter is an assistant professor at the Princeton University School of Architecture and creates and leads participatory design and advocacy engagements, with past partners including the Ali Forney Center and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Her project New Public Hydrant, with Chris Woebken, is held in MoMA’s permanent collection.

Support

This lecture is endowed by Wendy Evans Joseph.

This event is organized by The Architectural League.

League programs are also made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.