VISITING ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
The Visiting Artist In Residence creates an opportunity for accomplished artists from outside the region to conduct research, meet St. Louis community members, and explore issues of importance to this region. During the year of residency, the chosen artist engages the community through lectures, group discussion, art activities, and/or volunteer work. It culminates in an exhibition or special project that is shaped or conceived by this research and time spent in the community.
The Visiting Artist In Residence program showcases foreign-born artists based in the United States. This commitment allows Laumeier to present a globally-inflected program and highlight the many cultural contributions of immigrant artists.
2026 Visiting artist in residence
Juan William Chávez (b. Peru)
The 2026 Visting Artist in Residence is Juan William Chávez who holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chávez was born in Lima, Peru, and raised in St. Louis. He is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts. His creative practice includes public art, installations, knowledge-sharing workshops, paintings, zines, unconventional forms of beekeeping, and agriculture.
In 2024, Chávez was named lead artist for Bloomberg Philanthropy's $1 Million Public Art Challenge Grant "Art Pollination: Building Food Justice through Creativity" for the city of Orlando. His recent exhibitions include Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum; The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Counterpublic 2023 Triennial; La Trienal 20/21 El Museo del Barrio; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, among many others. Chavez has participated in numerous artist residencies, including Artpace, San Antonio, TX, and McColl Center for Art, Charlotte, NC.
Chávez’s interdisciplinary approach to art has gained the support of prestigious institutions like the Creative Capital, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, ArtPlace America, NEA Our Town, Ovation Network Stand for the Arts Award, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Art Matters Foundation. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times and Zocalo Public Square and is featured in "Artists and the Practice of Agriculture-Politics and Aesthetics of Food Sovereignty in Art since 1960," published by Routledge.
Chávez is the director and founder of the art and ecology nonprofit Northside Workshop and a lecturer at The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
2025 Visiting artist in residence
Renata Cassiano Alvarez (b. Mexico)
The 2025 Visiting Artist in Residence will be Mexico-born artist Renata Cassiano Alvarez. Working predominantly in the medium of clay, Cassiano Alvarez is interested in process and has developed an intimate and collaborative relationship with her chosen material. Influenced by archeology and historical artifacts, she is inspired by objects’ resilience, permanence and timelessness.
Cassiano Alvarez will present a large-scale sculpture titled Passage, in Laumeier’s outdoor galleries consisting of four interconnected archways that form an open-air construction. Its exterior will be clad in hundreds of colorful mosaic tiles, some of which will be made by St. Louis community members.
Inspired by the Gateway Arch and its status as the symbol for westward expansion, the large-scale work is intended to be a monument to the value of opportunity and the history of the city as an artery to a new frontier. Cassiano Alvarez is interested in how this shape might act as an entry way for local immigrant communities, stating “the work is a symbol, an archway to a new beginning.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Renata Cassiano Alvarez is a Mexican-Italian artist and interpreter born in Mexico City. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and her BFA from the Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, México. Her practice has extended to the interpreting field, where she functions as a bridge for non-English speakers. Her work can be found in public and private collections in Mexico, Estonia, Italy, Taiwan, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, China, USA and Slovenia. Her exhibitions include: Eutectic Gallery, Portland, OR; Lucy Lacoste Gallery, Concord, MA; Casa de Cultura, Coatepec, México; Museo de Antropologia de Xalapa, México; Centre Culturel d’Andenne, Andenne, Belgium Gallery Stalden, Bisserup, Denmark; New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan; Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis among many others. She works between her studio in Veracruz, Mexico and Springdale, Arkansas.
2025 Exhibitions are supported by Whitaker Foundation, Ken and Nancy Kranzberg, Joan and Mitchell Markow and Two Sister’s Foundation, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, and Mary Ann and Andy Srenco.
Renata Cassiano Alvarez and the Visiting Artist in Residence Program are supported by Windgate Foundation. The Visiting Artist in Residence Program is sponsored by 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis.
Past Visiting Artists in Residence:
2024 - Monika Weiss (b. Poland)
2023 - Lenka Clayton & Phillip Andrew Lewis (b. United Kingdom & United States, respectively)
2022 - Jean Shin (b. South Korea)
2021 – Aida Šehović (b. Bosnia and Herzegovina)
2020 – Odili Donald Odita (b. Nigeria)