The Fall 2026 Graduate Art guest lecture series, organized by Jan Tumlir and Jack Bankowsky.

Graham Harmon in Conversation with Jan Tumlir

This event is free and open to the public. RSVPs are not required.

Graham Harman is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. He is a founding member of the Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology movements and has written extensively on art and architecture. His most recent book is Waves and Stones: On the Ultimate Nature of Reality (London: Allen Lane, 2025). Others include Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (Open Court, 2002), Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory (Polity, 2016), Dante’s Broken Hammer: The Ethics, Aesthetics, and Metaphysics of Love (Repeater, 2016), Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican, 2018), Art and Objects (Polity, 2020), and Architecture and Objects (University of Minnesota, 2022), and The Graham Harman Reader (Zero Books, 2023). Harman spent 16 years teaching at the American University of Cairo. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, University of Innsbruck, University of Turin, and Yale University. Since 2013, he has been on the faculty of the European Graduate School (EGS).

Jan Tumlir is an author based in Los Angeles. He was a founding editor of the local art journal X-TRA and is a long-time regular contributor to Artforum and Frieze. More recently, he has joined the editorial team at Effects, a London-based journal devoted to “aesthetics in the shadows of the contemporary." Tumlir has written extensively on such artists as Bas Jan Ader, Uta Barth, John Divola, Cyprien Gaillard, Allen Ruppersberg, and James Welling. His books include: LA Artland, a survey of contemporary art in Los Angeles co-written with Chris Kraus and Jane McFadden (Black Dog Press, 2005); Hyenas Are…, a monograph on the work of Matthew Brannon (Mousse, 2011); The Magic Circle: On The Beatles, Pop Art, Art-Rock and Records (Onomatopee, 2015); and Conversations, produced in discussion with Jorge Pardo (Inventory Press, 2021). A book-length study of the role of gesture in painting is forthcoming. Tumlir is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Fine Art and Humanities & Sciences departments at ArtCenter College of Design, where he has served since 1999. In 2022, he joined the faculty of SCI-Arc as resident art historian.

Image: Courtesy of the artists.

See the full Fall 2026 Seminar schedule here.

Support for this series is generously provided by the following: Jack Shear, Brenda R. Potter, Brendan Dugan, Lisson Gallery, Beth Rudin DeWoody, David Kordansky, Jeffrey Deitch, Gattopardo, Tara Walters, Alan Hergott, and an anonymous donor.

ArtCenter's Graduate Art program is based on intensive studio practice and rigorous academic coursework. The program is distinguished by its low faculty-to-student ratio that provides students with the attention and feedback they need to refine and achieve their artistic goals. Faculty and students are artists working in all genres—film, video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and installation. A significant number of alumni have achieved national and international acclaim and often return to share their insights and expertise as visiting faculty and guest lecturers.