Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
Marking the centennial of artist Joan Mitchell (born Chicago, 1925), this public conversation offers a close look at the painter’s life and work through an analysis of six artworks spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s. The conversation features Sarah Roberts, Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation and co-curator of the 2022 retrospective of Mitchell’s work, who is joined by the Art Institute’s Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and director of Ray Johnson Collections and Research.
This in-depth discussion was the keynote address of the Joan Mitchell Centennial Symposium, a scholarly convening honoring Mitchell as one of the 20th century’s most innovative abstract artists and introducing new critical thinking about her extraordinary life and career. There is no more fitting place for Mitchell's centennial celebration than Chicago, the city where she was first introduced to modern art and devoted herself to a life of painting.
Marking the centennial of artist Joan Mitchell (born Chicago, 1925), this public conversation offers a close look at the painter’s life and work through an analysis of six artworks spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s. The conversation features Sarah Roberts, Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation and co-curator of the 2022 retrospective of Mitchell’s work, who is joined by the Art Institute’s Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and director of Ray Johnson Collections and Research.
This in-depth discussion was the keynote address of the Joan Mitchell Centennial Symposium, a scholarly convening honoring Mitchell as one of the 20th century’s most innovative abstract artists and introducing new critical thinking about her extraordinary life and career. There is no more fitting place for Mitchell's centennial celebration than Chicago, the city where she was first introduced to modern art and devoted herself to a life of painting.
