Liz Collins Artist Talk

Please note the location of this event has been moved from MECA&D’s Osher Hall to SPACE Gallery. This event is part of the MECA&D MFA Summer 2026 Lecture Series.

Liz Collins is a New York-based artist and designer whose work moves fluidly between fine art and design. Embracing abstraction, optics, and extreme material contrasts, Collins pushes the boundaries between painting, fiber arts, and installation—laying bare expressions of energy, emotion, and the visceral complexity of existence. She holds a BFA and MFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Collins’s work was the subject of Liz Collins: Motherlode (2025–2026), her first major U.S. survey, at the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, accompanied by her first monograph, published by Hirmer Publishers. Her work was featured in the 60th La Biennale di Venezia, Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa (2024), and in Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, curated by Lynne Cooke, which traveled to LACMA, the National Gallery of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Solo exhibitions include Candice Madey, New York; Luis De Jesus Los Angeles; Rossana Orlandi, Milan; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs; and Touchstones Rochdale, UK. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, the RISD Museum, the Tang Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the Museum at FIT, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), among others. Collins serves on the board of Queer|Art.

Collins’s honors include an Anonymous Was A Woman Fellowship, a USA Fellowship, a MacColl Johnson Fellowship, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts grants. Residencies include Civitella Ranieri, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Haystack.