Against Monoculture: A lecture series on artists, institutions, and practicing exits to business as usual
Against Monoculture is a multi-part lecture series organized by CUE Art Foundation and Purchase College’s MFA Visual Arts Program. Conceived as a lecture series in residence, Against Monoculture connects multiple partners, artists, and art organizations in an effort to rethink how institutions should thrive in era of debt and crisis.
The monocrop industry is an apt metaphor for the contemporary art market. Both scenarios create bad conditions for labor, bad ecosystems for local landscapes, bad environments for cultivating diversity and difference. Against Monoculture troubles the mythology of what is a working artist and considers various types of organizing, institution making, and alternative support structuring that art communities can enable and dream.
March 24, 2017 /// 4:00 – 5:30 PM
Nicholas Weist on “Doing Business in Shorts”
Weist is the founding director of The Shandaken Project, which has offered free residencies to important but under-served cultural practitioners since 2012. A veteran arts administrator, he has held senior positions at Creative Time and powerHouse Books, and has organized exhibitions internationally. He has written about art and visual culture for Frieze, Art in America, Whitewall, Interview, Document Journal, and several other publications. His work has been reflected on in The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Brooklyn Rail, T magazine, V magazine, Bomb, Art News, and many more.
Against Monoculture is supported by The School of Art+Design at Purchase College, State University of New York and CUE Art Foundation