Leading Women in the Arts

The Leading Women in the Arts series is a collaboration between the Weissman Center for Leadership and the InterArts Council. This engaging program reflects the center's support of public presentations by scholars, artists, writers, and practitioners that engage the academic work of the college with the public sphere.

Recent visiting artists in the series

Invited guest artists are featured in public campus discussions about the interconnections between creative expression of all forms and cultural transformations.

Okwui Okpokwasili

Okpokwasili is an American artist, choreographer and writer. Her multidisciplinary performances draw upon her training in theater, and she describes her work as being at “the intersection of theater, dance and the installation.”

Photo of Joan Jonas ’58 by Moira Ricci

Jonas is a sculptor, video and performance artist and has exhibited and performed her work at museums and large scale group exhibitions internationally.

Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen: An American Lyric” received numerous awards when it was published in 2014.

Rankine is the author of the 2017 Common Read “Citizen: An American Lyric” and “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely”.

Patrizia von Brandenstein is this year’s Leading Women in the Arts speaker.

2016–17: Patrizia von Brandenstein

von Brandenstein worked as both a scenic artist and costume designer, with credits including “Between the Lines” and “Saturday Night Fever”.