Photo and video documentation by Lizzie Moo.
This is a projection-mapped video commissioned by SECRIST | BEACH Gallery in Chicago, IL for their 2025 exhibition Master Class. Video by Lizzie Moo. Sound by Liam McGhie. (@just.call.me.liam)
The video was presented in a stand-alone room at the center of the gallery, with entrances on either side, allowing visitors to pass through or pause within the space as they moved through the exhibition.
I was commissioned to create a video for this room that paired SAIC alumni’s work in the show with inspirational works from the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection. The project was conceived in direct support of the exhibition’s thesis: that with access to a world-class museum, the experience of being an SAIC student—and eventually an alumnus—is inevitably shaped by the artwork encountered there.
—
Master Class brings together work by more than 65 alumni and current students who studied in the Painting and Drawing department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) between 2000 and 2025. The exhibition centers on the idea that artistic practice at SAIC is shaped by sustained proximity to the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection—one of the last remaining American art schools embedded within a major museum. Across generations, the works on view reflect how repeated exposure to historical and contemporary art informs, challenges, and reappears within students’ own approaches to painting and drawing.
The exhibition was on view from April 19 through June 21, 2025 at SECRIST | BEACH in Chicago, was highlighted by the Chicago EXPO 2025, and was guest-curated by SAIC President Emerita Elissa Tenny and SAIC professor, chair of Painting and Drawing, and art historian Lisa Wainwright.
Learn more about the Master Class show here: https://secristbeach.com/exhibitions/50-master-class-inside-the-last-american-museum-school-with-saic/
