Artists and Archives: Lindsey White

Archival investigation and activation are often key ingredients in the practice of polymathic San Francisco artist Lindsey White. Across individual artworks and overall exhibition strategies, she has engaged literally and emotionally with various archives, including the American Museum of Magic, San Francisco Art Institute Legacy Foundation + Archive (SFAI LF+A), Rhoda Kellogg Children’s Art Collection, Manitoba Museum of Finds Art, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

In this illustrated lecture, White discusses the importance of affording archival access to artists, upending traditional exhibition formats in fresh and uncanny ways, and the mining of under-known histories as a way to chart the future. She also focuses on a recent project, Last Art School, an exhibition and program series she organized at Hunter College that investigated the current crisis moment within higher arts education. The project included archival materials to reflect on how creative communities can collaborate, resist, and take action in unstable political and economic moments.

After the talk, and in the spirit of fellowship that animates much of her work, White presents Big Sandwich, a thirty-foot sub to be enjoyed by the community. As a professor at SFAI, and with the help of students, she hosted Big Sandwich for nine years in the grassy meadow outside the photography department. Vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free segments are available.

About the Artist

Lindsey White is an artist living and working in San Francisco, CA. She has exhibited at venues such as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen; Bolinas Museum, California; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; ACME., Los Angeles; San Francisco International Airport Museum; and Museum Bärengasse, Zurich. She was awarded SFMOMA’s 2017 SECA Award and residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, and Kala Art Institute, Berkeley. White was an associate professor and photography department chair at the San Francisco Art Institute before it closed in 2022, and director of contemporary practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. Her projects have been featured in the New York Times, Frieze, Art Forum, The New Yorker, KQED Arts, SF Chronicle, and Contemporary Art Daily. Her new book What? Is? Art? was recently published by Colpa Press.
 

This program is part of the Artists and Archives series, in which artists connected to SFAI share stories and projects from their own practices related to archives — or reflect on the histories and archival materials left behind by artists.