Ms. Aleksandra Matic holds a BA in Art History from Lake Forest College and an MA in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, focusing on modern and contemporary art from South Asia, Gender Studies, and Cold War Constellations. During an 18-year tenure at the Art Institute of Chicago, her roles included growing and revitalizing the member and donor travel programs and overseeing the museum’s legacy society as the Associate Director of Donor Travel and the Director of the Buckingham Society. In 2019, she curated an exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago titled Coming into Being- a conversation between nine visual artists which explored questions of identity and the ‘othered’ body using post-colonial theory.
She serves on the Executive Advisory Council, Emeritus Board, for the Educational Travel Consortium. Ms. Matic volunteers for various culture, health, and community-focused organizations, including the Artists of Nathdwara, Core of Culture, and Center on Halsted. She is an active member of The Arts Club of Chicago and the International Museum of Surgical Science. Ms. Matic enjoys travelling, reading, and volunteering in her free time.
This Fulbright-Nehru project in India is a collaboration with a multigenerational collective of pichvai artists in the temple town of Nathdwara. Pichvai are decorative textiles utilized by a Hindu devotional community called the Pushtimarg in their veneration of Lord Krishna. The focus of Ms. Matic ’s proposal involves working with a local filmmaker to produce a documentary based on the lives of these pichvai artists, the history of their painting, and Nathdwara. This documentary will communicate a crucial narrative and create dialogue within a global community to provide the platform needed for future pichvai artists to create and thrive for generations.