About
The Betty Jean and Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecture honors the Thiebauds' longtime commitment to educating the eye and hand along with the mind by presenting practicing artists, along with critics, curators, writers, historians, and museum professionals.
Along with the Visiting Artist Lecture Series and The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies, the Thiebaud Lecture is an essential experience for students pursuing the M.F.A. in Studio Art.
Prior Lectures
Teju Cole in Conversation with John Gossage
2026 Lecture — January 15, 2026
Teju Cole is a novelist, essayist, and photographer. He was the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine from 2015 until 2019.
Enrique Chagoya
2025 Lecture — January 30, 2025
Enrique Chagoya is a Mexican-born American painter, printmaker, and educator. His prints, drawings, collages, and multiples offer critical commentary on the global reach of the United States and its cultural, political, and historical tensions with Latin America.
Helen Molesworth
2024 Lecture — January 25, 2024
Helen Molesworth is a writer and curator based in Los Angeles. She is the host of David Zwirner's Dialogues podcast and the writer and host of the podcast Death of an Artist. She is the recipient of the 2011 Bard Center for Curatorial Studies Award for Curatorial Excellence.
Christina Quarles
2023 Lecture — November 17, 2022
Christina Quarles is a painter whose work questions assumptions and beliefs surrounding identity and the human figure.
Wangechi Mutu
2022 Lecture — May 12, 2022
Wangechi Mutu is an artist whose work is rooted in her investigations and advocacy around human representation.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
2021 Lecture — November 12, 2020
Njideka Akunyili Crosby negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria in collage and photo transfer-based paintings. This lecture celebrated Wayne Thiebaud's centennial birthday.
Leonardo Drew
2020 Lecture — February 6, 2020
Leonardo Drew is known for creating reflective abstract sculptural works that play upon the dystopic tension between order and chaos.
David Salle
2019 Lecture — November 1, 2018
David Salle is a contemporary American painter and essayist.
Aliza Nisenbaum
2018 Lecture — March 9, 2018
Aliza Nisenbaum is a painter.
Catherine Murphy in Conversation with Karen Wilkin
2017 Lecture — March 9, 2017
Catherine Murphy is a realist painter; Karen Wilkin is an art critic and curator.
Peter Schjeldahl
2016 Lecture — March 10, 2016
Peter Schjeldahl was a staff writer at The New Yorker and the magazine's art critic. He came to the magazine from The Village Voice, where he was the art critic from 1990 to 1998.
Rackstraw Downes
2015 Lecture — May 6, 2015
Painter Rackstraw Downes gave the inaugural Betty Jean and Wayne Thiebaud Endowed Lecture. He talked about painting from observation on site in the contemporary environment, and also visited the studios of current M.F.A. candidates in Art Studio.