New
Museum
Exhibition-Related

Convening for Contemporary Art, Education, and Social Justice

Cover Image:

Kameelah Janan Rasheed with participants in her Publishing Center workshop at the New Museum, 2018. Photo: Danielle Moulton

The New Museum inaugurates an annual convening of activists, artists, and educators to exchange knowledge and methods for generating critical discussion and structural change, while promoting safer and braver spaces.

As a non-collecting institution working primarily with living artists, the New Museum is poised to be responsive to ever-present and increasingly urgent priorities of inclusiveness, while taking stock of activities relevant to contemporary art, education, and social change. The Museum has published two historical books on contemporary art and education to generate, assemble, and disseminate work in the form of essays, artist entries, and lesson plans: Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education (1997) and Rethinking Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education (2011). Over the last decade, the Museum has actively created content, tools, and methods for employing contemporary art as a resource for engaging youth and communities in questions and ideas that matter to them. As the Museum considers its next step in making such tools and knowledge further available to educators, the new multi-day Convening for Contemporary Art, Education, and Social Justice invites artists, activists, classroom teachers, and educators in other settings to share best practices.

The Convening will actively acknowledge the inequities of systemic power in schools, from curriculum development and evaluation to social and environmental conditions, while supporting student- and teacher-centered growth and learning. Aspects of these days will intersect with programming related to the annual Summer Social Justice Residency and Exhibition, “The Black School X Kameelah Janan Rasheed,” and will also include self- and community care for educators, participant presentations, and talks and workshops with guests and collaborators.

The Convening will be organized with three interrelated themes relevant to the role contemporary art might play in space making.

1) Architectural Space
Where and how is the space for teaching and learning made within and beyond physical institutions?

Thursday July 26
6 PM Welcome Reception
7 PM Space for Learning: Within and Beyond Walls
Architect and historian Mabel O. Wilson joins New Museum artists-in-residence the Black School and Kameelah Janan Rasheed for a panel discussion considering the role of visual culture, art, and architecture in the creation of spaces centering black teachers, learners, and knowledge within conditions of systemic and institutionalized racism.

2) Social Space
How might contemporary art in teaching and learning support environments that encourage brave conversations and actions that contribute to social change?

Friday July 27
9:30–11 AM Welcome, Self and Community Care for Educators
11 AM–12:15 PM Dipti Desai, Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Art + Education Programs, NYU Steinhardt
12:15–1 PM Lunch provided
1-2:30 PM Convening participants share five-minute presentations on successful methods for creating inclusive space through contemporary art (see application for further information)
2:30–4 PM Workshop with the Black School
4–4:30 PM Reflection/wrap-up

3) Curricular Space
How do we create room within challenges, such as standardized curricula, for marginalized stories and critically engaged imagination?

Saturday July 28
9:30–11 AM Welcome, Self and Community Care for Educators
11 AM–12:15 PM Amanda Torres, writer, singer, teacher, organizer and Co-Founding Artistic Director of Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective (MassLEAP)
12:15–1 Lunch provided
1-2:30 PM Convening participants share five minute presentations on successful methods for creating space in curriculum through contemporary art (see application for further information)
2:30–4 PM Workshop with Kameelah Janan Rasheed
4–4:30 PM Reflection/wrap-up

Free to attend. The deadline to register is Tuesday, July 17. Activists, artists, organizers, and educators are encouraged to join. Please fill out this registration form. For any questions, please contact season@newmuseum.org.

Sponsors

Support for public programs is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

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