Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

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Stephanie Smith: Curating as an Ecology

May 7, 2024
6:30–8 pm

New York, NY, USA
Judd Foundation

101 SPRING STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10012

 

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Note: This event was originally scheduled for February 13, but has been rescheduled to May 7.

Chicago-based curator, writer, and arts leader Stephanie Smith joined ICI to share insights from over 25 years exploring ecologically- and socially-engaged curatorial and artistic practices.

Smith’s talk considered curatorial practice as an ecology—a series of networks and exchanges among collaborators, species, materials, and environments—and addressed how her perspective has shifted since beginning independent work. Alongside key prior projects, Smith highlighted her current collaboration with the Awi’nakola Foundation, a new Indigenous-led foundation based in British Columbia that has assembled a cross-cultural group of artists, scientists, and knowledge-keepers, all working together to regenerate land and culture in BC and beyond. 

Smith is a long-time ICI collaborator who has held many curatorial roles in the U.S. and Canada—including senior institutional positions at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University—and has recently made a shift toward independent practice. Almost twenty years ago, ICI and the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art launched Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art, Smith’s groundbreaking exhibition at the intersection of contemporary art and sustainable design. This talk coincided with the opening of Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology—one of our newest exhibitions—at Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art, which Smith supported as consulting curator.

Presenter
Stephanie Smith

Stephanie Smith is a Chicago-based curator, writer, and arts leader whose collaborative, socially engaged projects assert art’s power to envision and enact other futures.


Credits
This program is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with City Council. Support for this program is also made possible by the William Talbott Hillman Foundation.