Tang Teaching Museum presents Carrie Mae Weems as the 2025 McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar Resident
The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery will host two special events this fall featuring internationally acclaimed artist Carrie Mae Weems, presented as part of her 2025 McCormack Endowed Visiting Artist-Scholar Residency.
Weems is a widely influential American artist whose work investigates history, identity, and power through photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, video, and performance. During her residency, Weems will interact with classes, conduct workshops, and share her multifaceted artistic practice.
Ahead of her appearance, Weems has selected two films to be screened at 6 p.m. on
Thursday, Sept. 25: Her own “The Shape of Things” (2021) and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django
Unchained” (2012). As part of Tang’s Whole Grain film series, the films explore themes
of violence, agency, and the politics of seeing — key concerns across Weems’ artistic
practice.
At 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4, Weems will present "Memorial, Memory & Meaning," a live performance that includes her video “Leave Now!” (2022). The work explores
the story of Weems’ grandfather and raises questions about reparations as a moral
imperative. The performance also features live music by acclaimed pianist Vijay Iyer
and Grammy Award–winning violinist Jennifer Koh.
Weems’ work is also on view in the Tang exhibition "See It Now: Contemporary Art from
the Ann and Mel Schaffer Collection," which includes a photograph from the "Kitchen
Table Series (1990)," a pivotal work in Weems’ career.
Both events are part of Weems’ McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar Residency. Designed
to provide total immersion for both the artist and the Skidmore community, residencies
feature class visits, opportunities for faculty/student interaction, performances,
readings, and exhibitions. Admission to the museum and featured events are free and
open to the public.
The 2025 McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar Residency is presented by Skidmore College’s
Office of Special Programs, Art Department, and the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery.
About Carrie Mae Weems
For more than 40 years, Weems has built an acclaimed body of work that gives voice
to stories often silenced or ignored. Her work has been exhibited at major museums
worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles;
and The Tate Modern, London.
She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, grants, and fellowships, including
a Hasselblad Award, a Bernd and Hilla Becher Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, the
U.S. State Department’s Medal of Arts, the National Medal of the Arts, the Joseph
Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, NEA grants, the Louis
Comfort Tiffany Award, and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement
Award.
