Visiting Artist Series
About the Visiting Artist Series
The College of DuPage Visiting Artist Series provides opportunities for the community to interact with leaders in the field of contemporary art, design and culture. Through lectures, conversations and workshops, a diverse range of art professionals provide students with new perspectives on contemporary artistic practices.
The series is a collaboration between the Cleve Carney Museum of Art and the Fine Arts, Architecture and Photography programs. All lectures are free and open to the public. Times and Locations are subject to change.
Past lectures are available to view in our video library.
Speaker Schedule 2026-27
Christopher Gregory-Rivera
Lecture: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026 at 11am
Belushi Theater
Celeste Rapone
Lecture: Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026 at 1pm Belushi Theater
Steven Haulenbeek
Lecture: Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2026 at 1pm
Playhouse Theater
Speakers 2026-27
Christopher Gregory-Rivera
Visiting Artist
Lecture: Wednesday, September 23, 2026 at 11am
Belushi Theater
Christopher Gregory Rivera is a Puerto Rican artist based in New York City. His work interrogates how photography shapes culture, memory, and political understanding, exploiting its evidentiary qualities to question how truth is constructed and visualized. Through a practice that spans documentary, still life, and archival inquiry, he rescues, deconstructs, and reconfigures historic narratives to better understand the present and imagine alternative futures. His project “Las Carpetas” reimagines political memory in Puerto Rico by rescuing, photographing and appropriating archives from a secret police division dedicated to political persecution in the US Territory. Aperture Magazine said of the work: “Gregory-Rivera’s work offers the opportunity for us to consider the record of political persecution and to imagine new ways of healing and moving forward.” In 2025, Gregory Rivera founded the Instituto de Observación Colectiva, an initiative supporting lens-based artists, documentarians, and archival practitioners working with Puerto Rican history, identity, and collective memory. His work has been shown at institutions around the world including at the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Abrons Center, Smack Mellon and the Maine Institute of Contemporary Art.
Celeste Rapone
Visiting Artist
Lecture: Tuesday, November 3, 2026 at 1pm Belushi Theater
Imbued with autobiographical details, art historical references, and the artifacts of daily life, the paintings of Celeste Rapone (b. 1985; New Jersey) embody the anxiety, longing, and nostalgia inherent to the millennial condition. In uncannily flattened interiors—surrounded by the detritus of living—Rapone’s figures contort impossibly within their spaces; their limbs push against the frame, threatening to burst through the picture plane as Rapone tests the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. Rapone’s formalist concerns—surface, pattern, and color—are evident in the insistent flatness of her images, as spaces collapse and figures are pushed to the foreground, threatening to spill out toward the viewer. Frequently in the midst of action—working, reading, cooking—Rapone’s figures offer suggestions of narrative while emphasizing the very act of being observed.
Rapone’s work has been included in recent institutional exhibitions at Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; M Woods, Beijing, China; the START Museum, Shanghai, China; the Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Rizhao, China. Rapone was a 2018 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Rapone is represented by Corbett vs. Demsey, Josh Lilley Gallery, and Marianne Boesky Gallery; she lives and works in Chicago, IL.
Steven Haulenbeek
Visiting Artist
Wednesday, November 18th, 2026 at 1pm
Playhouse Theater
Steven Haulenbeek was raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and studied drawing and sculpture at Hope College before earning an MFA in Designed Objects from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. After working as an industrial and furniture designer, he established his independent studio practice in 2010.
Over the past decade, Haulenbeek has developed a multidisciplinary body of work spanning collectible design, lighting, furniture, and large-scale spatial installations. His work has been exhibited internationally in group exhibitions in New York, Milan, and Aspen, and commissioned by clients including Four Seasons, Proper Hotels, Sonos, and Haworth. Since 2017, Carpenters Workshop Gallery has represented his ICB series, while Egg Collective has represented his RBS work since 2021.
Haulenbeek’s work has been featured in publications including The New York Times T Magazine, Wallpaper*, Dezeen, Sight Unseen, and Design Milk. He was named a T Magazine “most exciting emerging American designer” and was recognized as a 2016 American Design Honoree at WantedDesign. His work is held in private and commercial collections worldwide.
Visiting Artist Lectures Video Library
Check out our full library for more artist talks and interviews.