Greek-born Vasia Rigou, Newcity’s Design Editor, is a Chicago-based art critic and culture journalist, largely on the subjects of contemporary art, design, and fashion. She moved to Chicago in 2013 to study Arts Journalism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC,) where she was awarded the New Artist Society Merit Scholarship.
She grew up to appreciate art after years of carefully planned, culture-filled travel itineraries and museum-hopping around Europe with her family. During this time, she received a bachelor’s in English Literature, in her native Athens; a master’s in Media, in Nottingham, UK; and studied foreign languages—English, German, and Spanish at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her writing—reviewing museum and gallery exhibitions, art fairs, fashion shows, and music festivals among others—has been published nationally and internationally both in print and online. In 2017, she founded and now serves as Editor-in-Chief of Rainbowed—an independently published website focused on the visual and performing arts, digital media, and popular culture. As of 2020, she regularly contributes to British international architecture and design magazines ICON and OnOffice. As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she co-founded Pickle, a boutique digital agency based in Chicago, to help local creatives establish their online presence.
When she’s not writing about art or looking at art—wine in hand, she keeps up with Chicago’s creative entrepreneurial and startup community, makes lists for pretty much everything, drinks immense amounts of coffee and takes cross-country road trips every chance she gets.