IMAGE DESCRIPTION and ALT TEXT with Kate Nesin
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
7PM
Hemmerdinger Screening Room
Library, 7th Floor (Room 706) / 68th Street Campus
RSVP HERE
Join KATE NESIN, art historian and curator-at-large of the Art Institute of Chicago and SARA GREENBERGER RAFFERTY, artist and Ruth Stanton Chair of the Department of Art & Art History, for a presentation, workshop, and discussion about writing image descriptions for both accessibility and art history. Nesin will share research and artists’ projects (including Greenberger Rafferty’s book Studio Visit) that feature image and audio description as well as captioning in fruitful ways.
The presentation and workshop will be useful for art historians, studio artists, faculty, staff, students, and any scholars using images in their work. It will be particularly of interest to MA and MFA students working on theses.
Snacks and refreshments will be provided.
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Art & Art History, the Sainsbury Initiative, and the Academic Center for Excellence in Research and Teaching (ACERT).
Kate Nesin is an art historian, researcher, and writer based in upstate New York. Since 2011 she has been Mellon Fellow at the Toledo Museum of Art, associate curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, guest curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and is currently back at the Art Institute of Chicago, as their curator-at-large for modern and contemporary art. Her exhibitions have included solo shows with Lucy McKenzie, Kemang Wa Lehulere, and Helena Almeida, among others. Kate is the author of Cy Twombly’s Things (Yale University Press, 2014), and has published on a wide range of artists, with recent or forthcoming essays on Nairy Baghramian, Carl Cheng, B. Ingrid Olson, Lutz Bacher, and Eva Hesse.
[Image description: A black-and-white photograph framed closely around the face of a white woman with silvery-brown, shoulder-length hair. Her head is slightly tilted to her right, and she smiles with her lips closed.]
