This spring, the Artist’s Institute and SculptureCenter are co-organizing a series of talks and conversations intended to inspire new thinking about the future of small arts institutions. All of the invited speakers are artists who have deep and varied experiences working within and alongside arts organizations. Experimentation, artistic leadership, racial and economic justice, community building, and sustainability are among the topics they’ll discuss.

This series assumes that as the conditions of living and working in New York have changed over the last 50 years, the city’s arts institutions (museums, non-profits, art schools) have changed too—internalizing rising social and economic inequality through expansion, professionalization, and scarcity-based models of “success.” These changes have dramatically affected how artists interact and find community with one other. They have changed artists’ expectations for their professional lives. We often hear institutions say they care about artists. Yet we want to ask again: What does it mean to center artists and their needs, really?

In the undercommons, Fred Moten exhorts us, drawing on the curriculum of the Freedom School, to ask what we have that we want to keep––working from a place of abundance as we imagine our collective futures. The artists we’ve invited have a plenitude of resources to share, ones we expect will transform how we look at our organizations. We invite others who are working toward a more just and interesting future for artists to join us in hearing what they have to say.

All sessions are free and open to the public. Live captioning will be provided. This program is developed alongside the course “Artists’ Co-Op II” at the Artist’s Institute at Hunter College.

To register, click on the date and time below for the session(s) you wish to attend.

Thu, Feb 25, 1pm
Alan Ruiz

Thu, Mar 11, 1pm
Christopher Udemezue and Andrea Solstad

Thu, Mar 25, 1pm
Steffani Jemison and Quincy Flowers

Thu, Apr 8, 8pm
farid rakun
Materials: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Thu, Apr 22, 1pm
Florian Pumhösl