Please join us for the ninth annual Susan T. Marx Distinguished Lecture as we welcome artist Jesse Krimes, in conversation with Professor Andrew Lamas, Urban Studies, Social Policy and Practice Department at the University of Pennsylvania.
The 2025 Susan T. Marx Distinguished Lecture featuring Jesse Krimes is presented by the Arthur Ross Gallery and generously sponsored by Susan T. Marx CW’66, with additional support from the Institute of Contemporary Art, the School of Social Policy & Practice, and the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Jesse Krimes is a multimedia artist whose work explores societal mechanisms of power and control with a focus on criminal and racial justice. While serving a six-year prison sentence he produced and smuggled out numerous bodies of work, established art programs, and co-created artist collectives. He is the Founder and Director of the Center for Art & Advocacy, the first national organization dedicated to supporting justice-impacted creatives. Krimes also successfully led a class-action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for charging formerly incarcerated people predatory fees after their release from prison.
Krimes won an Emmy Award for his documentary “Art and Krimes by Krimes.” This fall, Krimes has solo exhibitions opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Jack Shainman Gallery. His work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and the International Red Cross Museum. He has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Pew Center, Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capitol, and Art for Justice Fund. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Kadist Foundation, Bunker Artspace, and the Agnes Gund Collection. He is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.
Andrew Lamas joined the faculty in Urban Studies in 1990, and the longstanding focus of his critical pedagogy, research, and writing is poverty, inequality, and alternative economy. He is Core Faculty in Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies (GSWS) and the Alice Paul Center, he participates in the GSWS Global Gender Group, and he is Faculty Affiliate of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center. His courses are cross-listed with numerous departments, including Africana Studies.
He serves on the board of the Bread & Roses Community Fund (which has distributed more than $11 million to organizations in the Philadelphia area working for access to health care, economic justice, a clean, safe environment, civil and human rights, racial and economic justice, and peace). He is on the editorial board of the Radical Philosophy Review—the journal of the Radical Philosophy Association. He is the website editor and a founding board member of the International Herbert Marcuse Society.
He founded and directed (from 2012-2015) Penn’s Social Justice Research Academy. He is the recipient of the Katz Award for Teaching Excellence in Urban Studies (2000), the School of Arts & Science’s CGS Distinguished Teaching Award (2005), and the School of Social Policy & Practice’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2015).
He received the BA (Humanities / Political Science) from Davidson College (Phi Beta Kappa), the MA (Economic Development/Africa) from the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies, and the JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
