Public Lecture: David Antonio Cruz

David Antonio Cruz

Join Cranbrook Academy of Art at deSalle Auditorium for a free, public lecture with David Antonio Cruz on Wednesday, February 11, 2026, at 6pm. Please enter through the Cranbrook Academy of Art Library; Cranbrook Art Museum’s galleries close at 5pm.

David Antonio Cruz is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, drawing, performance, and site-specific installations. Drawing on a mix of queer discourse, fashion, history, and pop culture, his work interrogates Western traditions of representation and invites subjects to pose as a form of resistance and play, queering the act of posing. Cruz’s recent solo exhibitions include “stay, take your time, my love” at ICA San Francisco (2025); “hauntme” at Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (2025); and “When The Children Come Home” at ICA Philadelphia (2023).

His work has been included in notable group exhibitions at the ICA Boston, Newark Museum of Art, The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, the Ford Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum, McNay Art Museum, and the Kemper Art Museum. Forthcoming solo exhibitions include the Wave Hill Gardens Museum, Bronx, NY (2026).

Recent residencies and fellowships include Joan Mitchell Artist-in-Residence, New Orleans, LA (2025); Latinx Artist Fellowship (2025); Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO (2025; 2024); the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Award (2018); Neubauer Faculty Fellowship, Tufts University, Boston (2018); BRIC Workspace Residency, Brooklyn (2018); Gateway Project Spaces, Newark, NJ (2016); and the LMCC Workspace Residency, New York (2015). Cruz is a 2025 Outwin Boochever National Portrait Competition prizewinner. Cruz lives and works in New York City, where he is the Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University.

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David Antonio Cruz, Can you stay with me tonight, cause you are here, 2021.