Professionalism and Its Discontents
Presented with NADA
With Mary Walling Blackburn, Ethan Philbrick, Laurel Ptak, Lise Soskolne, and Jack Waters
Pier 36, New York, NY
May 16, 2015
This panel talk, organized by Shandaken Projects, will explore how increasing professionalization in the visual arts has affected artists, organizations, and cultural production generally. The panel will ask: What assumptions are collectively made about the market, education, museological practice, and the other aspects of a professionalized milieu; and how might those assumptions affect culture workers? If institutionalized systems of knowledge and understanding are dismantled or ignored, how might art be evaluated, and to what end will it be produced? How does class-position impact artists and their output?
The panel will include Mary Walling Blackburn, artist; Ethan Philbrick, doctoral candidate, performance studies, NYU; Laurel Ptak, curator and director of Triangle Arts Association; Lise Soskolne, artist and core organizer of W.A.G.E.; Jack Waters, artist and former director of ABC No Rio; and will be moderated by Nicholas Weist, director, Shandaken Projects.