Jim Duignan is an artist, forming the Stockyard Institute in 1995 as a civic, artist project in the Back of the Yards community of south Chicago. Stockyard Institute was influenced by community artists, revolutionaries, local activists, and radical teachers who explored the community as sites of contest and considered the social and civic forms of public engagement as much a part of practice as they did their life. Duignan is a professor of Visual Art in the College of Education at DePaul University of Chicago where he is the Chair of Visual Art Education.

Select exhibitions include the retrospective Stockyard Institute: 25 Years of Art and Pedagogy, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, Envisioning Justice, Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, PUBLIC SCHOOL, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Smart Museum, Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland, Interference Archive, Brooklyn, Kochi-Muziris Biennial, India, and the Hull House Museum, Chicago.

Select publications and press include The Atlantic Monthly, The Art Newspaper, Nick Cave’s Epitome, The New York Times, Chicago Reader, New Art Examiner, Chronicle of Higher Education, New City, and Chicago Tribune. His work has been recognized by the Weitz Family Foundation, Illinois Humanities, Artadia, and the Art Institute of Chicago.