Making and Being: Modes of Critique

BFAMFAPhD presents Making and Being, a series of conversations that ask: What ways of making and being do we want to experience in art classes? The series places artists and educators in intimate conversation about forms of critique, cooperatives, artist-run spaces, healing, and the death of projects. These conversations about Art & Pedagogy are co-presented by BFAMFAPhD & Pioneer Works, hosted by Hauser & Wirth, covered by media partners Eyebeam and Bad at Sports. The first installment of this series will focus on Modes of Critique. What modes of critique might foster racial equity in studio art classes at the college level? The conversation will include Billie Lee, Anthony Romero, and Judith Leeman of the Retooling Critique Working Group, and fimmaker Eloise Sherrid. The Retooling Critique Working Group is organized by Judith Leemann and was initially funded by a Massachusetts College of Art and Design President's Curriculum Development Grant.   Billie Lee is an artist, educator, and writer working at the intersection of art, pedagogy, and social change. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, an MFA from Yale University, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in American Studies. She has held positions at the Queens Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, University of New Haven, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Art History at Hartford Art School. Judith Leemann is an artist, educator, and writer whose practice focuses on translating operations through and across distinct arenas of practice. A long-standing collaboration with the Boston-based Design Studio for Social Intervention grounds much of this thinking. Leemann is Associate Professor of Fine Arts 3D/Fibers at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and holds an M.F.A. in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her writings have been included in the anthologies Beyond Critique (Bloomsbury, 2017), Collaboration Through Craft (Bloomsbury, 2013), and The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production (School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MIT Press 2007). Her current pedagogical research is anchored by the Retooling Critique working group she first convened in 2017 to take up the question of studio critique’s relation to educational equity. Anthony Romero is an artist, writer, and organizer committed to documenting and supporting artists and communities of color. Recent projects include the book-length essay The Social Practice That Is Race, written with Dan S. Wang and published by Wooden Leg Press, Buenos Dias, Chicago!, a multi-year performance project commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and produced in collaboration with Mexico City based performance collective, Teatro Linea de Sombra. He is a co-founder of the Latinx Artists Retreat and is currently a Professor of the Practice at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Eloise Sherrid is a filmmaker and multimedia artist based in NYC. Her short viral documentary, "The Room of Silence," (2016) commissioned by Black Artists and Designers (BAAD), a student community and safe space for marginalized students and their allies at Rhode Island School of Design, exposed racial inequity in the critique practices institutions for arts education, and has screened as a discussion tool at universities around the world.   About the co-presenters and media partners: BFAMFAPhD is a collective that employs visual and performing art, policy reports, and teaching tools to advocate for cultural equity in the United States. Pioneer Works Press publishes a range of publications that foster experimental ways of thinking, and seeks to advance the dissemination of the arts through publication and recorded sound. Drawn from programs at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, all editions can be found at pioneerworks.org. Contemporary art talk without the ego, Bad at Sports is the Midwest's largest independent contemporary art podcast and blog. Eyebeam is a platform for artists to engage society’s relationship with technology.   Access info: The event is free and open to the public. The entrance to Hauser & Wirth Publishers Bookshop is at the ground floor and accessible by wheelchair. The bathroom is all-gender. This event is low light, meaning there is ample lighting but fluorescent overhead lighting is not in use. A variety of seating options are available including: folding plastic chairs and wooden chairs, some with cushions. This event begins at 6 pm and ends at 8 pm but attendees are welcome to come late, leave early, and intermittently come and go as they please. Water, tea, coffee, beer and wine will be available for purchase. The event will be audio recorded. We ask that if you do have questions or comments after the event for the presenters that you speak into the microphone. If you are unable to attend, audio recordings of the events will be posted on Bad at Sports Podcast after the event. Parking in the vicinity is free after 6 PM. The closest MTA subway station is 23rd and 8th Ave off the C and E. This station is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are 1/2/3/A/C/E 34th Street-Penn Station and the 14 St A/C/E station with an elevator at northwest corner of 14th Street and Eighth Avenue.