Artist Talk: Chris Cornelius

As part of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s yearlong celebration of the Quadracci Pavilion’s 25th anniversary, join award-winning Wisconsin-born architect Chris T. Cornelius (Oneida) for a special Artist Talk. Drawing on his work in architecture and Indigenous design, Cornelius will explore how buildings can express identity, memory, and belonging. Through projects including the Indian Community School campus and the Chipstone Foundation’s Knowledge Beings, he’ll share how architecture can move beyond function to reflect shared values and foster lasting connections between people and places.

The Artist Talk series welcomes emerging, mid-career, and established artists to share what it means to live creatively. Discussing motivation, medium, and technique, artists will reveal how and why their work expresses their emotions and ideas.

About Chris Cornelius

Chris Cornelius is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, and Professor of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. He is the founding principal of studio:indigenous and creates artifacts that offer a distinct vision of contemporary Indigenous culture. Cornelius’ honors include multiple Best of Design Awards from the Architect’s Newspaper, an Architizer A+ award, and the Miller Prize from Exhibit Columbus. His work has been exhibited at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial. His drawings are in the permanent collections of MoMA in New York, and SFMOMA in San Francisco. Cornelius has been the Dean’s Visiting Professor at Columbia and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at Yale. In 2025, Chris was inducted into the National Academy of Design.

Image:James Steeno, untitled watercolor illustration (detail), commissioned by the Milwaukee Art Museum for the “Inspired by Milwaukee” campaign, 2026.