Alternative Practices: Working Beyond the Institutional Framework

Manon Slome, Curator and co-founder of the nomadic arts organization, No Longer Empty, will be in discussion with curator and cultural critic, Laura Raicovich, author of Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest, to discuss how art and exhibitions can be created to increase community and foster civic exchange. As Raicovich wrote in the forward of No Longer Empty: Building Art and Community in Unused Spaces, art in accessible and public spaces, "has the potential to reflect the lived experiences of diverse publics back to them, or to break open entirely other possibilities of encountering the world as audiences engage in common experiences."

No Longer Empty: Building Art and Community in Unused Spaces is a publication that re-evaluates and reflects on the work of New York City–based nomadic arts organization, No Longer Empty. The book, amply illustrated with photographs of artworks and events, details the development of a curatorial program that aimed to create a democratic access to art through site- and community-responsive exhibitions and radical educational programming deeply grounded in local research. Divided into three sections – How it Happened, Making it Accessible and Making it Replicable - essays by six key participants trace the evolution of the group’s highly innovative curatorial, educational and collaborative programmatic strategies. Case studies of selected exhibitions, short accounts by a host of artists and educators, and replicas of forms and checklists function as a kind of manual to inspire the next generations of makers and agents of change—curators, artists, community organizers, educators—who want to take cultural production and the power of art into their own hands and into their own communities.