Smart Salon: The World according to Robert Earl Paige

In conversation with Smart Museum of Art Curator of Public Art, Laura Steward, South Side artist Robert Earl Paige discusses his newly-commissioned installation Give the Drummer Some! and his decades-long practice as an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator. The program includes an introduction by Ian Brundige, Art Design Chicago Engagement Fellow.

Multi-disciplinary artist and arts educator Robert Earl Paige lives and works in Woodlawn, on the South Side of Chicago, where he was born in 1936. He is one of very few artists who participated not only in the Black Arts Movement, but also in the Chicago Bauhaus, while working at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill in the 1960s. Following his education in textile design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he went on to an international career in design, while at the same time nurturing the art scene on the South Side. He was given a retrospective at the Hyde Park Art Center in the summer of 2024.

Laura Steward is Curator of Public Art at the University of Chicago and Smart Museum. Her recent projects include Ruth Duckworth: Life as a Unity in fall 2023. A specialist in commissioning works of art, she joined UChicago in 2017. Previously she served as Phillips Director and Chief Curator of SITE Santa Fe and founding curator of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). She is the author of many exhibition catalogues, occasional lecturer at UChicago, and a graduate of Harvard College and the Williams/Clark Program in the History of Art.

Smart Salons is an interdisciplinary conversation series that fosters dialogue between UChicago students, faculty, staff, and the South Side community at the intersections of art and culture. From close-looking in the galleries to panel discussions, artists, researchers, scholars, and practitioners are invited to help us think and reflect expansively about art, ideas, and stories that matter today.