In Conversation: Andy Campbell, Chair and Associate Professor, Critical Studies at USC, will be in conversation with Thomas Müller.

Andy Campbell (Associate Professor of Critical Studies) is an art historian, critic, and curator whose work foregrounds LGBTQ communities and their archives as wellsprings for histories of art and design. He is the author of Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art (Manchester University Press, 2020) and Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ (Black Dog and Leventhal, 2019). Together with Amelia Jones he co-edited the catalog Queer Communion: Ron Athey (Intellect 2020), named one of the "Best Art Books of 2020" by The New York Times. In November of 2020 he co-curated with Patty Chang, Live Artists Live III: Despair/Repair, a biennial performance art program dedicated to examining catastrophe and healing in the roiling context of the 2020 U.S. election and the (ongoing) COVID-19 pandemic. His criticism and academic writing can be found in Artforum, The Invisible Archive, X-TRA, GLQ, Dress, Aperture, and other venues. Recently he was named a DesignInquiry Fellow (2021/2022), and during the Summer of 2022 he will serve as the curator of the famed Artpace International Artist-In-Residence program in San Antonio, Texas. Forthcoming projects include: Jennifer West: Media Archaeology, a catalog of the artist's recent work co-edited with Chelsea Weathers (Radius Books, 2022); a survey exhibition of the politically-potent practice of Los Angeles-based artist Susan Silton; a history of design exhibitions (co-written with Jessica Brier); and an academic study of the work of Beverly Buchanan, Harmony Hammond, and Laura Aguilar, focusing on the manifold ways that poverty circumscribes artistic practice in the United States. 

Thomas Müller is Associate Professor and Chair of Art, 3D, at the University of Southern California (USC). He received his BFA from the University of Washington and MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa and spent his childhood growing up in Africa, the United States and Europe. Growing up in such disparate locales and cultures has inevitably influenced his work, in particular as it relates to language, time, memory and space. Residencies include The European Ceramic Work Centres’ Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands and Stichtung Kaus Australis Rotterdam, The Netherlands.