Culture Strike: Laura Raicovich

Description

This talk forms part of The Cambridge Modern and Contemporary Art Seminar Series.

In our current historically precarious moment, what is the role of cultural organizations and art? How might they adapt and change to the demands of these times? Is it enough? Writer and curator, Laura Raicovich, will discuss her recent book, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest (Verso 2021) providing her personal experiences as a former museum director, art worker, and committed seeker of equity. Having led the Queens Museum for three years during the period of Trump’s election and its aftermath, in addition to over 20 years of working in the arts, Raicovich will delve into the structures that exist and how, in the context of ongoing, iterative institutional failures, we can remake and remodel cultural production, reality, and imagination collectively. The discussion will be lively and will invite participation.

Laura Raicovich is a New York City-based writer and curator. She is curator and editor of Protodispatch, a digital publication featuring artists’ perspectives on transcontinental political, social, economic, and environmental concerns; Raicovich initiated the forum with Mari Spirito and Protocinema in 2022. Her recent book, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest, was published in 2021 by Verso Books and is being translated into Arabic, Portuguese, and Italian. With a collective of artists, musicians, and culture workers, Raicovich will open Francis Kite Club, a bar/cultural and activist space in the East Village, NYC in 2023. While Director of the Queens Museum from 2015 to 2018, Raicovich co-curated Mel Chin: All Over the Place (2018), a multi-borough survey of the artist’s work that filled the entire museum. Raicovich has also served as Interim Director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art; was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Bellagio Center; and was awarded the inaugural Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators at Hyperallergic. Previously, she held positions at Creative Time, Dia Art Foundation, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Public Art Fund. Raicovich lectures internationally is the author of At the Lightning Field (CHP 2017) and A Diary of Mysterious Difficulties (Publication Studio 2014); she is co-editor of Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production (OR 2017) and Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech (Amherst Press 2022).

The event will take place on Zoom. The zoom link will be circulated via email to registered attendees.

About The Cambridge Modern and Contemporary Art Seminar Series:

The MaCA Seminar meets every other week during full term at 5pm, hosting a range of speakers including scholars, artists and curators. For the academic year 2022/23 the open meetings will take place remotely via zoom and at the History of Art Department when possible. A Zoom link will be circulated via email to those who register.

Convenors of the Cambridge Modern and Contemporary Art Seminar Series 2022/23 are Prof Alyce Mahon (am414@cam.ac.uk) and Dr Sofia Gotti (sg959@cam.ac.uk).

Image: Photo by Michael Angelo