ART FORUM: LAURA RAICOVICH

Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest

Monday 15 May

12:45 – 1:15pm

Cell Block Theatre

In an age of protest, culture and museums have come under fire. Protests of museum funding (for example, the Metropolitan Museum accepting Sackler family money) and boards (for example, the Whitney appointing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders)–to say nothing of demonstrations over exhibitions and artworks–have roiled cultural institutions across the world, from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to the Akron Art Museum. At the same time, never have there been more calls for museums to work for social change, calls for the emergence of a new role for culture.

Laura Raicovich was President and Executive Director of the Queens Museum, and most recently served as Interim Director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Prior to that she worked at Creative Time and the Dia Art Foundation. She is a recipient of both the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship and the inaugural Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators at Hyperallergic. She coedited Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production and is the author of At the Lightning Field and A Diary of Mysterious Difficulties.