DANBURY, Connecticut — Four artists whose critically acclaimed works span a wide spectrum from illustration and painting to video, sculpture, installation, performance and textiles will discuss their artistic philosophies and creative process during the Western Connecticut State University spring semester Master of Fine Arts Visiting Artist Lecture Series from Wednesday, Feb. 4, through Monday, April 27, 2026.
All lectures, sponsored by the WCSU Department of Art M.F.A. in Visual Arts program, will be in Room 144 of the Visual and Performing Arts Center on the WCSU Westside campus, 43 Lake Ave. Extension in Danbury. Admission will be free, and the public is invited; advance registration is requested at www.wcsuvpac.eventbrite.com.
The series will begin at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, with a lecture by Rudy Gutierrez, an award-winning American illustrator and educator of Puerto Rican heritage born in Bronx, New York. He has created artworks for films and performances, U.S. postage stamps, book covers, posters, picture books, and LP/CD covers. His artwork for Santana’s hit album “Shaman” was used as a set design at the 2002 Super Bowl half-time show, and his paintings were commissioned for the film “Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary.”
In 2019, Gutierrez’s paintings were featured as the Curatorial Spotlight at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Mesa, Arizona. His work was shown at the Norman Rockwell Museum as part of the Unity Project Exhibition 2020, an initiative of the museum dedicated to an inclusive America. He also was featured in “Imprinted: Illustrating Race” in 2022 and 2025 at the Delaware Art Museum. The work also will be on exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2026. “Imprinted” explores how the printed image has both challenged and reinforced cultural stereotypes in the United States.
Gutierrez’s art is in many public and private collections, including those of musical icons Carlos Santana, Clive Davis, and Wayne Shorter. His awards include Dean Cornwell Recognition Award, Distinguished Educator in the Arts Award, Society of Illustrators Gold Medal, Caldecott Honor Award, Africana Book Award, and Pura Belpre Award for his children’s books. In October 2025, Gutierrez was inducted into the prestigious Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. He is a Professor Emeritus at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and has lectured at various institutions internationally.
The M.F.A. spring semester visiting lecture series also will feature the following artists:
Wednesday, Feb. 25 — Fritz Horstman, an artist, curator, and educator based in Bethany, Connecticut, where he also is Education Director at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. He received his B.A. from Kenyon College and his M.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art. His work has been shown throughout the U.S. and in Germany, Norway, Russia, and France. Recent solo exhibitions of his sculptures, videos, performances, and works on paper have been held at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain; Municipal Bonds gallery in San Francisco; Planthouse gallery in Manhattan; and Jennifer Terzian Gallery in Litchfield. An exhibition of his “Folded Palladiums” will open at Municipal Bonds in March 2026. Recent awards and artist-in-residencies include Tusen Takk, The Arctic Circle Residency, and The Bauhaus Residency.
Horstman has curated exhibitions across Europe and the U.S., including “Anni Albers: In Thread and On Paper,” a traveling show most recently at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. He also curated “Becoming Trees” at Concord Art in Concord, Massachusetts. As Education Director at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, he is the author of “Interacting with Color: A Practical Guide to Josef Albers’s Color Experiments,” published by Yale University Press in 2024. He has lectured and given workshops at l’École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Lebanese American University in Beirut, The Royal Academy of Art in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Yale University, Princeton University, and many other institutions.
Wednesday, April 1 — Glenn Goldberg, a New York City artist and musician who was born in Bronx, New York. He studied at the New York Studio School and earned his B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Queens College, CUNY. He has taught at Cooper Union, New York Studio School, and Queens College, where he was Professor and Chair of Graduate Studio Art. He also has been a panelist and visiting artist for numerous M.F.A. painting programs in the U.S. In June 2026, he will teach at Umbria Contemporary Arts in Italy, a new art center and school in the medieval village of Monte Castello di Vibio.
A recipient of many awards, Goldberg has received grants from the Edward Albee Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Sharpe-Walentas, Urban Glass, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, LA Times, New Yorker, and Chicago Tribune, among others. In “Hyperallergic,” art historian Jennifer Samet described his paintings as “ethereal,” as a “meeting point of the ordinary and the other.”
Goldberg is a member of The National Academy of Design and is currently represented by Chris Sharp in Los Angeles and The Approach in London. He has shown extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, with work in many museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Monday, April 27 — Hangama Amiri, born in Peshawar, Pakistan, is an Afghan-Canadian artist. She works predominantly in textiles to explore ideas of home and the impact of gender, social norms, and geopolitical conflict on women’s lives in Afghanistan and the diaspora. Using a painterly approach to color and materials, she examines how everyday objects, such as a passport, a vase, and celebrity postcards, are imbued with cultural memory and carry political and personal significance.
Amiri earned her M.F.A. from Yale University in 2020. She received her B.F.A. from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was a Canadian Fulbright and Post-Graduate Fellow at Yale’s School of Arts and Sciences in 2015-16. Last year, she was shortlisted for the 2025 Sobey Art Award, Canada’s premier contemporary visual arts prize, in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada.
Amiri’s work has been shown nationally and internationally since 2017, with solo shows in the U.S., Canada, Italy, France, Germany, and the UK. Recent exhibitions include the Esker Foundation, Calgary; Toronto Biennial 2024; Mönchehaus Museum Goslar, Germany; Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; and Sharjah Biennial 15, United Arab Emirates. In 2023, her solo exhibition “A Homage to Home” was held at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, with a published catalog. It was reviewed by The New York Times, and traveled to the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. Amiri is a recipient of multiple grants, awards, and artist residencies, along with work in public collections, including the Denver Art Museum.
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