2020 Visiting Artist Lecture: Virgil Ortiz

Virgil Ortiz moves into a new era combining art, décor, fashion, video and film. One of the most innovative potters of his time, Ortiz’s exquisite works have been exhibited in museum collections around the world including the Stedelijk Museum-Hertogenbosch of The Netherlands, Paris’s Fondation Cartier pour I’art Contemporain, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and the Denver Art Museum.

Ortiz, the youngest of six children, grew up in a creative environment in which storytelling, collecting clay, gathering wild plants and producing figurative pottery were all a part of everyday life; his grandmother Laurencita Herrera and his mother, Seferina Ortiz, were both renowned Pueblo potters and part of an ongoing matrilineal heritage.