Jim Duignan was born and raised in Chicago. He is an artist and professor and chair of Arts Education in the College of Education at DePaul University. He started the Stockyard Institute in 1995 as an artist project and a small community institute in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of south Chicago.

The works of Jim Duignan and Stockyard Institute have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe at Hull House Museum, Chicago; Interference Archive, Brooklyn, NY; Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow, Poland; Allgirls Gallery, Berlin, Germany; rum46, Aarhus, Denmark; Galeria de la Escuela de Artes Plasticas, Puerto Rico; P74, Llubljiana, Slovenia; Mess Hall, Chicago; and published in the New Art Examiner, Chicago Social Practice History Series, Artforum, Chicago Reader, Whitewalls, Proximity Magazine, Palm Press, AREA Chicago, Green Lantern Press, Set Up Tolerance, University of Chicago Press, and The New York Times.