Michelle Litvin

BA, Wheaton College

Michelle Litvin is a visual artist based in Chicago. Litvin was awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and is working with the foundation on a new archiving initiative. Serving on the board of Extension Gallery for architecture, Litvin also is documenting and archiving all of the exhibitions. She runs a gallery, called In Process, and shows projects that are in a critical phase of development to provide a salon setting for furthering the artist's ideas and projects. In collaboration with the Hyde Park Art Center, Litvin is documenting how the Center's building, designed by Doug Garofalo, functions by tracking the making of architectural sculptures with the artists in their studios through the installations at the Center and the community's interaction with the pieces. Her work with Juan Angel Chavez lead to a catalogue of his installation "Speaker Project," which was published by HPAC in the spring of 2008.

Her photographs of the built environment frequently appear in The New York Times and Interior Design magazine and have won several awards. Before starting her own firm in the mid 1990's, Litvin worked as a journalist in Chicago, writing and photographing for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader. From 1989-1991, she reported and photographed in Beijing for Newsweek and worked as a photo editor for the magazine in New York while attending the Master's program at Columbia University in Middle East Languages and Cultures with a focus on Central Asia from 1987-1989. She graduated magna cum laude with a BA in philosophy from Wheaton College, Massachusetts in 1982.