Emerging Ideas on Art and Society: W. J. T. Mitchell

Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA) presents Emerging Ideas on Art and Society, which invites an artist, a thinker, or a critic to come and share their doubts, questions, incomplete thoughts, and challenges about what art and society are today. A small group of students and faculty will gather to have an informal but intense conversation with the guest. A short text will be shared in advance to inform the conversation. While we expect active interventions, the guest leads the dramaturgy of the event with the questions they bring to the table that day. 

This conversation’s guest is art historian, visual theorist, and academic W. J. T. Mitchell. W. J. T. Mitchell is Emeritus Professor of English, Art History, and Cinema at the University of Chicago. He is known for his many publications on art, visual culture, and media politics, including Iconology (1986), Picture Theory (1994), What Do Pictures Want? (2005), and Image Science (2015). Mental Traveler, a memoir of his son’s twenty year struggle with schizophrenia appeared in 2020. He was editor-in-chief of the journal Critical Inquiry from 1977-2020. His latest book, Seeing through Madness: Essays in Crazy Times, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2026.