Please Register Via Zoom: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMsdO-rpj4vHtwXz8AS05AG8AAuIeWBDn12
EFA Project Space's SHIFT Residency for Arts Workers hosts a virtual town hall and round table with artist-arts workers organizing for institutional change, equity, and justice within and outside of NYC cultural institutions. The evening will feature short presentations by representatives of the Culture Workers Education Center (CWEC), Arts Workers for Black Lives (AW4BL), Museum Workers Happy Hour, and former and current museum educators. The presentations will be followed by breakout working sessions in which all attendees are invited to join. Accessibility: ASL interpreting provided, contact for specific needs - projectspace@efanyc.org.
Speakers (Affiliations)
Natasha Bunten (Culture Workers Education Center)
Kerry Downey (Artist and Museum Educator, SHIFT Resident)
Megan Elevado (Arts Educator, Marabou at the Museum, NYC Museum Workers Happy Hour)
Patrick Jaojoco (FABnyc, Arts Workers for Black Lives)
Natalia Viera Salgado (Abrons Arts Center, Arts Workers for Black Lives)
Antonio Serna (Artist, Documents of Resistance/People’s Cultural Plan and SHIFT Resident)
Context
Across the city, and around the world, the COVID crisis and shutdown has severely impacted arts and culture workers, with many museum staff still furloughed, cuts to education departments and public programs ongoing (and worse predicted in coming fiscal years), and many museums grappling at the same time with institutional racism and unequitable labor practices. This upheaval in the arts sector, set against the background of wider demands for social and racial justice, also presents opportunities for institutional change and a reckoning with the ways in which our arts institutions have historically functioned, the often opaque frameworks and hierarchies through which ostensibly public institutions are run, and their role in the communities they serve.
Aiming to create connections between a number of groups engaging in organizing in the cultural sector, the evening will include short presentations by arts worker organizers followed by breakout working group sessions in which all attendees are invited to join. Arts Workers, employed or unemployed, furloughed and precarious workers, those in transition between fields, artists, and allies are invited to attend and contribute to this coalition building-focused event. Topics to be discussed include institutional approaches to diversity and anti-racism, board structures, job security and salary transparency, funding and divestment, abolition and decolonization, and responsibility to broader communities both within and outside the art world.
Presented as part of EFA Open Studios 2020.
Participant Bios
Natasha Bunten is the Director of Culture Workers Education Center, and a nonprofit consultant focusing on strategic planning, organizational development, and labor. Previously, she served as Deputy Director then Interim Executive Director of Artis, and oversaw the Young Collectors Council at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Natasha has produced public programs, performances, and exhibitions in partnership with Third Streaming and Performa, the Maryland Institute College of Art, New Museum, and The Walters Art Gallery. For more than a decade, she has lectured on professional development for workers and with students, and collaborated on educational projects investigating cultural labor in the U.S. economic system.
Kerry Downey is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist and teacher. From 2007-2019 they worked as an educator at The Museum of Modern, running over fifteen Community and Access Partnerships and programs across New York City. Downey left MoMA prior to COVID firings to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design. They have also taught at Parsons/The New School of Design, Hunter College, and City College of New York. Downey’s art (video, printmaking, painting, drawing, writing, and performance) has been shown nationally and internationally. As a teacher and artist, their work explores relationality through the many ways we inhabit our bodies and access forms of power.
Megan Elevado is a Filipinx-Irish-American writer, artist, and historian based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work interprets design, architecture, and art through a sociological lens exploring how art, objects, and the built environment affect personal and group identities, reflect the beliefs and traditions of cultures, serve as social conditioning tools, and have the power to incite societal change. Megan’s ongoing project Marabou at the Museum documents her analysis of Western museums as embodiments of colonial legacies through their administrative structures, architecture, and fundraising, collecting, and curatorial practices. Megan’s analysis is informed by her experiences working at cultural institutions including the American Museum of Natural History, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Tenement Museum. She currently teaches material culture and museum studies at Parsons The New School for Design. Megan is co-organizer of NYC Museum Workers Happy Hour, providing museum workers with a forum for discussion, organizing, and collective action.
Patrick Jaojoco is a Filipino American curator, researcher, writer, and organizer currently working as Director of Programs at FABnyc. He works in and researches urban historiography, the spatial & cultural implications of decolonization, and decolonial theory and practice. In his curatorial practice, he works to gather people together in an effort to collectively build political historical knowledge. He is a member of NEW INC at the New Museum (2019–2021), where he works on a project called the Decolonial Mapping Toolkit; and is a current AICA Art Writing Workshop mentee. He has worked in several New York City arts institutions over the last decade, including Art in General, Creative Time, and Storefront for Art and Architecture, and has organized numerous independent exhibitions and public programs throughout New York. He was a 2015-2017 Curatorial Fellow at SVA’s MA Curatorial Practice program, and received his BA in English Literature and Environmental Studies from New York University.
Natalia Viera Salgado is a Puerto Rican independent curator and curatorial consultant based in New York City and Puerto Rico. She is also the co-founder of :Pública Espacio Cultural, an independent art space in Alto del Cabro, Santurce Puerto Rico. Her art historical research focuses on contemporary art in relation to decolonial practices, architecture, social and environmental justice, and new media with a keen interest in hybrid and interdisciplinary projects. She has collaborated with División del Diseño(Puerto Rico), worked at El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY), Art in General (Brooklyn, New York), Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, New York) and The Nathan Cummings Foundation (New York). Viera is a founding member of Colectivo se habla español, a collective working on artistic and social projects that expand the limits of language while addressing migration, identity, human rights, and memory. She is currently the curatorial resident at the Abrons Arts Center.
Antonio Serna is a Mexican-American artist, activist, and independent researcher, originally from Texas and currently living in New York. His current project Documents of Resistance focuses on the art and activism of artists of color. Antonio Serna has organized over a dozen autonomous art projects, workshops, and campaigns. Notable collaborative self-organized projects include The People’s Cultural Plan launch at Artists Space 2017; Strength in Numbers/Solidarity Mixer for Equity, Cue Art Foundation and Common Field in 2017; Brooklyn Community Forum on Anti-Gentrification and Displacement at the Brooklyn Museum in 2016, Documents of Resistance: Collective Timelines at Interference Archive in 2015, Arts & Labor: Radical Think Tank at Sunview in 2015, Arts & Labor: Alternative Schools of Art at CAA 2015, The artCommons at Queens Museum International 2013, and What Do We Do Now? Arts & Labor Alternative Fair at Eyebeam in 2013. Antonio is currently co-host of Museum Workers Happy Hour, a cultural worker support group that advocates for change from a workers perspective within New York museums and cultural institutions. He has taught art and design at Brooklyn College CUNY and Parsons School of Design. Antonio holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, and a BFA from Parsons School of Art. Links: www.antonioserna.com | www.Linktr.ee/NYCmuseumworkersHH
About SHIFT
EFA Project Space's SHIFT Residency provides peer support, mentoring, and studio space for artists who work in arts organizations (as curators, educators, administrators, etc) to boost their personal creative practices. SHIFT recognizes the work of arts workers for whom their livelihood isn’t just a day job, but a passion and responsibility, demanding high amounts of creativity, stamina, and sacrifice. The SHIFT Residency honors these artists’ commitment to the arts community with a supportive environment to revitalize their creative practices. Each year, residents are selected through a competitive nomination process based on the excellence of their work, their strong potential for artistic growth, their need to "shift" (however they might define this), and the outstanding contributions they have made to New York's cultural institutions. Since its inception in 2010, SHIFT has hosted over sixty artists working in a range of media, from sound and installation to painting, performance, and social practice. In addition to its role as a support network, SHIFT promotes advocacy for arts workers and seeks to increase equity and representation within the field.