Living to Learn Panel Discussion

In concert with Inventory Press and the Teiger Foundation, the ICA at VCU is pleased to be publishing Living to Learn, a multiauthor volume about radical pedagogy edited by Noah Simblist, VCUarts associate professor of painting and printmaking. For this pre-release event, Simblist will moderate a panel with book contributors Beatriz E. Balanta, Cara Benedetto, Hope Ginsburg, and Michael Jones McKean.

Living to Learn: Art & Education for the Common Good presents the work of artists, curators, collectives, and scholars who address contemporary art as a site of learning in the twenty-first century. Building on earlier histories of education as civic service for the common good, it focuses on the last twenty-five years while exploring the future of art education as a practice that unfolds both in and beyond school. The book’s case studies reveal how innovations in education have a dynamic relationship with artistic practice, alternative arts organizations, universities, museums, and biennials.
Some questions that the book addresses include: How can alternative organizations and traditional institutions learn from one another? How have exhibition platforms created space for artists to generate learning environments? How have these practices changed assumptions about art institutions and artistic practice? Finally, how can we think about the economic, ecological, and institutional sustainability of all of these practices?

Doors open and cash bar 5–6 p.m. Panel discussion 6–7:30 p.m.

Noah Simblist is an associate professor and chair of Painting + Printmaking at VCUarts. He also works as a curator, writer, and artist with a focus on art and politics, specifically the ways in which contemporary artists address history. He has contributed to Art in America, Art Journal, Modern Painters, Terremoto and other publications. His curatorial projects include Summer Sessions: Commonwealth at the ICA at VCU (2019); Aissa Deebi: Exile is Hard Work at Birzeit University Museum (2017); New Cities Future Ruins in Dallas; False Flags with Pelican Bomb in New Orleans (2016); Emergency Measures at the Power Station (2015); Tamy Ben Tor at Testsite (2012); Out of Place at Lora Reynolds Gallery (2011); Queer State(s) at the Visual Arts Center in Austin (2011), and Yuri’s Office by Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts (2010). He earned his PhD in art history from the University of Texas at Austin, his MFA in painting from the University of Washington, and his BA in visual art from Hampshire College.

Beatriz E. Balanta is a writer, educator, and cultural producer based in Cali, Colombia. She has published articles about psychoanalysis, political speech, racism, and classism in academia, and photography and the construction of Black identity. Balanta is the executive director and founder of Black Ground, a cultural production company based in Cali, focused on contemporary art of the African diaspora. Previously, she was assistant professor of art history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Cara Benedetto is an associate professor of Painting + Printmaking at VCUarts. An artist and writer, she has exhibited at Chapter NY, Night Gallery in Los Angeles, Metro Pictures, Art In General in New York, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, and MOCA Cleveland. Her writing has been published with Badlands, C Magazine, Sleek Magazine, Area Sneaks, Qui Parle, The Third Rail, and Halmos. She was a 2013–15 fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, where she published the experimental romance novel The Coming of Age. She was the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant in 2014 and is the editor of Contemporary Print Handbook, a printmaking textbook for universities. She received an MFA from Columbia University and studied at the Tamarind Institute of Lithography.

Hope Ginsburg is a project-based artist whose work integrates video, performance, and social practice. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as MoMA PS1, MASS MoCA, Wexner Center for the Arts, USF Contemporary Art Museum, Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Baltimore Museum of Art, SculptureCenter, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Center Vilnius, and the Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Her projects have received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Women & Philanthropy at The Ohio State University. She is the recipient of a Wexner Center for the Arts Artist Residency Award in Film/Video, a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship in Film and Video, and an Art Matters Foundation Grant. Ginsburg has attended residencies such as the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, Skowhegan, the Wexner Center Film/Video Studio Program, and The Harbor at Beta-Local. Writing about her work has appeared in Artforum, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She holds a Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art.

Michael Jones McKean is a sculptor who explores the nature of objects in relation to folklore, technology, anthropology, and mysticism, employing media as diverse as ancient meteorites, primitive textiles, of-the-moment technologies, raw clay, psychotropic medicines, and prismatic rainbows.McKean is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Nancy Graves Foundation Award and an Artadia Award. McKean has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at The Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The MacDowell Colony, The International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York City, The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in New York City.

McKean’s recent exhibitions include shows at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Parc Saint Leger Centre d’art Contemporain, Nevers, France; Horton Gallery, New York, New York; The Quebec Biennale, Quebec City, Canada; Gentili Apri, Berlin, Germany; The Art Foundation, Athens, Greece; Inman Gallery, Houston, Texas; Parisian Laundry, Montreal, Canada; Project Gentili, Prato, Italy; Shenkar University, Tel Aviv, Israel; The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, among others. McKean has taught Sculpture + Extended Media at VCUarts since 2006.