Unpredictability and the Cat: Luis Camnitzer on Art and Education

Join us in the ICA’s Royall Forum for a talk from artist Luis Camnitzer in relation to his conceptual work A Museum is a School.

The ICA’s presentation of A Museum is a School (site-specific installation, 2009–present) is on view starting March 12. During this talk, Camnitzer will explore the importance of art as a dynamic process rather than a product and the museum as a forum for exchange.

Camnitzer is a is a German Uruguayan artist, writer, and educator who has been living and working in New York since 1964. Camnitzer’s work deals with systems of power, repression, pedagogical norms, and the deconstruction of familiar frameworks. His work is often humorous and politically charged. He was one of the three co-founders of the New York Graphic Workshop (1964–1970) with artists Liliana Porter and José Guillermo Castillo. The NYGW was dedicated to the democratization of art and its separation from the market. As a theorist, he has contributed to the field of conceptual art in Latin America; he is author of New Art of Cuba (2003) and Conceptualism in Latin American Art (2007). His thesis on Latin American conceptual art is that it is not a style but a strategy that evolved independently from Western influence and draws on the nineteenth century teachings of Simón Rodríguez, the philosopher best known for tutoring Simón Bolívar. A collection of Camnitzer’s writings on art, education and activism was published recently under the title One Number is Worth One Word (2020). 

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