Should I Stay or Should I Go: A Conversation on Leaving the Museum - OH/OS
Thursday, November 11:
6:00pm
In 2020 the ongoing pandemic had museums shuttered around the world. As the year wore on many of us watched in horror and suffered the consequences as museums abandoned their staff, firing some of the most precarious and vulnerable museum workers. Now that museums are reopening their doors, should we ever go back? With the histories of colonialist practices, demands for repatriation of objects, tainted funding, political snafoos, endless labor issues and more, is it time to abandon the museum for good?
Join graduates of the UIC Museum and Exhibitions Studies program Devin Malone, Jeanine Pollard in conversation with Laura Raicovich whose tumultuous experience at the Queens Museum as its former Director informs her new book Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest (Verso).
- Devin Malone (they/them) is an arts worker based in Brooklyn. They build bridges between ideas, forms, and communities and have organized dynamic public programs and learning experiences at Dia Art Foundation, The Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Gallery 400. They are a 2017 graduate of the UIC Museum and Exhibition Studies program.
- Jeanine Pollard (she/her) is a NYC-based educator and cultural org worker. She evaluates and designs accessible learning experiences in a variety of different contexts, including bicultural bilingual schools for the deaf, art museums, and most recently online. She is a 2018 graduate of the UIC Museum and Exhibition Studies master’s program.
- Laura Raicovich (she/her) is dedicated to art and artistic production that relies on complexity, poetics, and care to create a more engaged and equitable civic realm. Her latest book, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest (Verso 2021) was published in June. She most recently served as interim director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, a museum devoted to queer art and artists and is the recipient of both the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship and the inaugural Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators at Hyperallergic.