Free; RSVP required.
Join us for a conversation with Graciela Iturbide and Enrique Chagoya in conjunction with Graciela Iturbide: Between Two Worlds, an exhibition spanning more than five decades of work by the celebrated photographer. This event is in part a homecoming, as Iturbide’s first monographic museum exhibition in the US took place at SFMOMA in 1990. The previous year, Chagoya had exhibited Iturbide’s work at Galería de la Raza in the Mission, beginning their longtime friendship. Iturbide and Chagoya will discuss the arc of her career, narrating the stories around her poetic and fantastical photographs of the everyday across Mexico as well as in the United States, India, Italy, and elsewhere.
Iturbide and Chagoya will speak in Spanish and Chagoya will translate the conversation into English.
A student of political economy who turned to art, Enrique Chagoya makes drawings, prints, and multiples using pop and extemporaneous historic symbols to critique colonialism and the constant change of contemporary cultural paradigms. He is full professor at Stanford University’s Department of Art and Art History and will become professor emeritus in fall 2026. He received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2017 and a J. S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2021. He was also the artist honoree at the San Jose Museum of Art Annual Gala and Benefit in 2023. His work is in the permanent collections of many national and international museums, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York; SFMOMA and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Artium Museum of Contemporary Art for the Basque Country in Spain; and MUNAL-Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico, among others.
Graciela Iturbide (b. 1942, Mexico City) is known for her fantastical black-and-white photographs of communities in Mexico. She has also traveled the world, respectfully photographing uncanny, everyday moments in India, Madagascar, Italy and elsewhere. Her works have been featured in over 60 monographic exhibitions, including a 2007 retrospective at the J. Paul Getty Museum and survey shows at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2019 and C/O Berlin in 2026. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship; the Hasselblad Foundation Photography Award; the Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art; and was the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Princess of the Asturias Award for the Arts in Spain. Her works are in the permanent collections of museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; MoMA, and the Tate Modern, London.
Support for Public Programs and Artist Talks at SFMOMA is provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Distinguished Lecture Series.