Systems of Reproduction: Teaching Race in the Galleries

What can works of art tell us about the entangled histories of race and design? Using the works in the Kemper Art Museum Teaching Gallery as prompts and provocations, this talk will survey how design practices and media have helped to reproduce systems of racial domination in the United States from the age of slavery to the present day. By focusing on works by contemporary Black artists, we will also consider the art itself as critical lenses on the past that inform contemporary relationships between social media, algorithmic technology, and processes of racial exploitation and segregation.

Chris Dingwall is an Assistant Professor of Design History in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. He is co-editor of Black Designers in Chicago, which will be published by the University of Chicago Press in Spring 2026, and is beginning a new research project on the Black Arts Movement in the Midwest. He was recently awarded a Seed Grant from CRE2 for Black Paper: Book Arts and Print Culture in the African Diaspora, an exhibition he is co-curating at the Olin Library to open in Spring 2029.