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Nicolas Lampert Headshot

Nicolas Lampert

  • Teaching Faculty II, Community Arts
  • Area Head, Community Arts
  • Teaching Faculty II, Writing & Critical Thinking

Education

  • MFA, Sculpture, California College of the Arts, 1995
  • BFA, Printmaking, University of Michigan, 1992

Biography

Nicolas Lampert is a Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist and author whose work focuses on themes of social justice and ecology. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Library of Congress, and over sixty archives and special collections across the world. Collectively, he works with the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative - a worker-owned printmaking cooperative of over forty artists in North America that formed in 2007. He also works with the Art Build Workers - a group of six artists, designers, photographers and educators who are based in Milwaukee and who work locally and travel around the country organizing multi-day art builds that help unions, organizations and movements amplify their messages through visual art, media, and archiving. The Art Build Workers primarily collaborates with the National Education Association (NEA) that is the largest union in the country with an estimated membership of over 2.7 million members. Lampert is also an art organizer with Voces de la Frontera - Wisconsin’s largest immigrant rights organization. His first book A People’s Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements was published by The New Press in 2013 and is part of the People’s History Series edited by Howard Zinn. Lampert is the area head for the Community Arts program in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Links

Recent & Selected Works

young children looking down at a mud stencil of a wolf
mud stencil, Protect Endangered Species, St. Olaf College, MN, 2020
Parachute held open by many people over the Wisconsin State Capitol interior steps. The parachute has an image of a woman holding a child, reading "familias unidas | keep families together"
VDLA, parachute banner, State Capital Building, Madison, WI, 2018
Wall of art exhibit with many posters collaged together, titled "Sanctuary for Survival"
Amplifier Foundation, group exhibition, Sanctuary: Design for Belonging, Seattle, WA, 2018
wooden billboard displaying a mural of the Milwaukee Commandos
Milwaukee Commandos mural, ReciproCity, Milwaukee, WI, 2016
crowd of people surrounding a mud stencil being applied to the pavement. The stencil shows a woman holding a child and sign reading "stop the raids. voces" and "end sheriff/ICE collaboration" with an American flag in the background
mud stencil, May Day, Milwaukee, WI, 2015
black and white mural of a locust morphed with a tank
Locust Tank mural, Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee, WI, 2006

Artistic Exhibitions & Artwork

  • Lampert, Nicolas, Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities, 2008, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
  • Lampert, Nicolas, Becoming Animal, 2005, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA
  • Lampert, Nicolas, 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts, International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC), 2011, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative
  • Lampert, Nicolas, 9 + 1 Ways of Being Political: 50 Years of Political Stances in Architecture and Urban Design, 2013, Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • Lampert, Nicolas, This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, 2022, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, NH
  • Lampert, Nicolas, Baird Center, 2024, public art, commissioned to create 4 art works (digital prints), Milwaukee, WI

Awards

  • Public art award: Baird Center (Expansion Project), Milwaukee, 2D art, Milwaukee, WI, 2022
  • Mary L. Nohl Individual Artists Fund (established artist’s category), 2011
  • Mary L. Nohl Fund Individual Artist Fund (established artist’s category), 2005

Books

Nicolas Lampert, A People’s Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements, (New York: The New Press, 2013)