Unapologetically

Self-taught artist Barry Yusufu creates sensitive portraits of friends and acquaintances back home in Nigeria. His mission is to paint the stories of everyday people and thereby elevate the African experience through art. Barry's portrait in our collection, featuring a radiant woman holding a yellow facemask, is particularly symbolic as it launched his career during the Pandemic in 2020. In this p...

Artist Lavar Munroe infuses his work with a cornucopia of influences and personal experiences, including his Christian upbringing, travel, anthropological research and the trauma of losing his mother as a child. Colourful and visually arresting, his art can also be deeply unsettling. He's not afraid to grapple with darker emotions and often feels compelled to offer critique on societal ills. In th...

Growing up in rural Australia, artist David Noonan sought cultural references in film, many of which went on to inspire his work in later life, including this linen collage in our collection. He is known for combining figurative images with more abstract elements, such as Japanese Boro textiles. He also likes to time-travel, coalescing images from different time periods to create what he calls 'te...

The work of artist Stefan Bruggemann is conceptual and provocative, but also aesthetically pleasing. Imagine lashings of gold leaf daubed onto red wood, collaged with poetic text that evokes the dark days of the Covid pandemic. Through his art, Stefan likes to pose existential questions, challenging us to reflect on themes such as freedom, individualism and capitalism.  In this podcast series, the...

At first glance, we see a pretty arrangement of blue flowers that could easily grace a Delft dinner plate, but on closer inspection the print is considerably more complex. Artist Sofia Crespo uses AI to reimagine nature, generating pictures of hybrid life forms. By challenging the boundaries of her imagination, she creates beguiling images based on jellyfish, spiders, and other organisms.  In this...

Colour, symbols, glitter, sand -- these are the raw ingredients in Jamaal Peterman 's art. Based in New York, Jamaal layers the past, present, and future into his abstract landscapes as he seeks different ways of depicting the 'black ecosystem in America.' Compelled to expose social injustice, he puts his emotion onto the canvas but also wants us to find joy in his work.  In this podcast series, t...

We all deserve a reflective moment, to be a spirit, to just exist. So says US artist and designer Rory Scott who often harnesses AI to create mesmerising pieces of digital art. Her work is all about creating an emotional shared experience with the viewer, where we can contemplate passing time, memories and our own mortality. Ultimately, however, Rory sees life as a 'magical experience.' In this po...

Two women sit by a pool gossiping. A cheeky smirk passes between them -- is this an everyday moment captured on canvas, or an allusion to racial segregation? Fresh from winning a New York Emmy, Nigerian artist Modupeola Fadugba talks about her exquisite portrait of two swimmers from a senior synchronised-swimming team based in Harlem, New York. She reveals how her art has evolved to become a conve...

Meet the charismatic couple who own the art collection displayed on Chicago Booth's London campus. Katie and Felix Robyns, MBA '85 began collecting in 1988 to 'feed their souls' while working in investment banking. It has become a lifelong pursuit and they remain passionate about the power of art to educate minds and boost mental health. They also explain their role as curators and why this divers...

Professor Canice Prendergast is fascinated by artists who see the world through a different lens. He's an economist at the University of Chicago and has curated the business school's art collection in Chicago and Hong Kong since 2007. His mission is to expose the school's students to contemporary art on a daily basis, thereby provoking debate and developing their ability to problem-solve.  In this...