This conversation series will be on solidarity, social justice, and communal care in museums, independent art spaces, and artistic projects. Convened and moderated by Ilaria Conti, an independent curator, and POWarts Steering Committee meber Francesca Altamura, invited guests will discuss their work toward ethical community practices in the contemporary art field and beyond.

For the first session, join Daonne Huff, Director, Public Programs & Community Engagement at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Calder Zwicky, Assistant Director for Teen and Community Partnerships at the Museum of Modern Art, as they focus on museums beginning to reopen in the face of the pandemic. An important question arises: do art institutions and artistic practices generate spaces of care for their publics?

If you are able, please donate at least $15 to support POWarts in hosting these programs.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ilaria Conti is an independent curator with a focus on research-based practices addressing social justice, decolonial processes, and the relationship between institutional infrastructures, communal care, and public engagement. Most recently, she served as Research Curator at the Centre Pompidou for Cosmopolis, a multiyear platform devoted to research-based art. Previously, she served as Exhibitions and Programs Director at CIMA New York, Assistant Curator of the 2016 Marrakech Biennale, and Samuel H. Kress Interpretive Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other positions. Curated projects include ALT(ering) + SHIFT(ing) + COMM(uning) (2020), Labor/Art/Auratic Conditions (2020), Prove di R(i)esistenza (2020), Cosmopolis #2: Rethinking the Human (2019), Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence (2018), Cosmopolis #1: Collective Intelligence, (2017); 6th Marrakech Biennale: Not New Now (2016).

Daonne Huff is an arts administrator, performance centered artist, curator and poet who was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She is Director, Public Programs & Community Engagement at The Studio Museum in Harlem. For more than 15 years, she has worked with institutions and organizations including the Department of Art & Design, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University; Groundswell; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; The Laundromat Project and the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership. She holds a BA in Art History from Vassar College and an MA in Visual Arts Administration with a Non-Profit concentration from New York University. Throughout her professional career, Daonne has focused on working with non-profit arts organizations dedicated to increasing arts' accessibility to a wider, more diversified audience and advocating for the support and necessity of creative expression and arts education within society at large. Having devoted the bulk of her adult life to arts administration, Daonne has found her way back to her own artistic practice. She has performed and exhibited at venues including BLDG 92, FiveMyles, JACK, Rutgers University, Welancora Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Calder Zwicky is the Assistant Director for Teen and Community Partnerships at the Museum of Modern Art. In this capacity, he runs the Museum's Community Partnership Program, which creates programming throughout New York City for a wide-range of non-profit organizations and their audiences, including programs with homelessness initiatives, court-involved youth, post-incarcerated adults, HIV/AIDS service organizations, refugee groups, and more. In addition, he oversees the institution’s free arts programming for teens including the MoMA + MoMA PS1 Cross-Museum Collective, the MoMA Digital Advisory Board, In the Making studio art courses, and the Open Art Space initiative, a free weekly drop-in program for LGBTQ teens and their allies. He has worked for a variety of museums and arts institutions including the Walker Art Center, the Queens Museum, and the Bronx Museum of Arts.

Making Space: Art and Generative Communal Practices