Artist Talk with Dread Scott – March 1st, 5:00-6:30pm

The Queens Museum’s Open A.I.R. Artist Services Program and the Social Practice Queens MFA Concentration at Queens College invite you to join artist Dread Scott for a presentation and discussion of their work.

Location: Queens College, Klapper Hall, Fine Arts Department Room 672 on the 6th floor.

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Directions to the Queens College campus

About Dread Scott
Dread Scott is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is exhibited across the US and internationally. For three decades he has made work that encourages viewers to re-examine cohering norms of American society. In 1989, the entire US Senate denounced and outlawed one of his artworks and President Bush declared it “disgraceful” because of its use of the American flag. His art has been exhibited/performed at MoMA/PS1, Pori Art Museum (Finland), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and galleries and street corners across the country. He is a recipient of grants form Creative Capital Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation and his work is included in the collection of the Whitney Museum.

About Social Practice Queens
Social Practice Queens (SPQ) is a unique MFA concentration bringing together the resources of an academic research institution, Queens College (City University of New York: CUNY), with the long-standing community-based activism of the Queens Museum. The new MFA concentration in social practice integrates studio work with social, tactical, interventionist and cooperative forms. SPQ’s goal is to initiate interdisciplinary projects with real world outcomes rooted in CUNY’s rigorous departmental offerings (e.g.: urban studies, environmental science, public policy, experimental pedagogy, social theory) in tandem with the Queens Museum’s ongoing community-based activities.

About Open A.I.R. Artist Services Program
Open A.I.R. draws on the Queens Museum’s resources, staff expertise, and networks to provide workshops and lectures that help artists grow their practice, advance their career, and develop sustainable lives as artists. Given the Museum’s commitment to socially-engaged art that crosses sectors, as well as attention to its role in neighboring communities, Open A.I.R. works to expand the notion of who is an artist and, moreover, utilizes a holistic view of how to support their potential to thrive and contribute to the cultural landscape of Queens and New York City more broadly. Tailored to artists in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx, Open A.I.R. prioritizes the needs of artists of color, queer artists, and immigrant artists, facilitating conversations where art meets activism, and organizing experiences that bring together artists and non-artists.

Open A.I.R. is made possible by a generous grant from The Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund. Additional support provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Image: On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide, Performance still 1, 2014. Pigment print, 22 x 30 in. Project produced by More Art.  © Dread Scott. (Photo: Mark Von Holden Photography. © Dread Scott)

Questions? Email sespinoza@queensmuseum.org

SPQ in The New York Times! (FEB. 5, 2016)

Maureen Connor, Professor Emeritus and co-founder of the social practice program at Queens College, was featured in The New York Times, introducing SPQ and the rise of social practice and collaborative art in academic programs: “We try to teach collaboration,” … “Most artists haven’t had the opportunity to work collaboratively, and many of them find it difficult at first to work that way. For so many years, they have been encouraged to work on their own and in competition with others.”

Read more here: Social Practice Degrees Take Art to the Communal Level

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