ICP hosts a town hall on personal and civic freedoms, both home and abroad, as part of For Freedoms’s 50 State Initiative. This project, which urges greater civic participation through art and discourse ahead of the fall 2018 midterm elections, includes activations such as billboards, exhibitions, and events. The ICP For Freedoms town hall will feature images and facilitation by ICP alumna, current students, and faculty.
This is a free event, but please register in advance. ICP Members have access to preferred seating in our reserved members’ section.
Our ICP Museum–public program combination ticket grants $10 entry to the galleries starting at 4:30 PM to those attending the program. Tickets are only available online when you register for the program.
About For Freedoms
For Freedoms started in 2016 as a platform for civic engagement, discourse, and direct action for artists in the United States. Inspired by Norman Rockwell’s 1943 paintings of the four universal freedoms articulated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—For Freedoms seeks to use art to deepen public discussions of civic issues and core values, and to clarify that citizenship in American society is deepened by participation, not by ideology. For Freedoms is part of a rich history of artists employing means of mass communication to provoke political discourse. For Freedoms believes art, and artists, play an important role in galvanizing our society towards a more representative and transparent government.
50 State Initiative Project Statement
Since 2016, For Freedoms has produced special exhibitions, town hall meetings, billboards, and lawn sign installations to spur greater participation in civic life. This year, For Freedoms launched its 50 State Initiative, a new phase of programming to encourage broad participation and inspire conversation around November’s midterm elections.
Building off of the existing artistic infrastructure in the United States, For Freedoms has developed a network of over 300 artists and 200 institutional partners who will produce nationwide public art installations, exhibitions and local community dialogues in order to inject nuanced, artistic thinking into public discourse. Centered around the vital work of artists, For Freedoms hopes that these exhibitions and related projects will model how arts institutions can become civic forums for action and discussion of values, place, and patriotism.
Moderators
Ariana Faye Allensworth is the Teen Academy manager at ICP. She holds a masters in social work from UC Berkeley and bachelors in urban studies and African & African-American studies from Fordham University. Prior to her role at ICP, Allensworth supported the development and implementation of school and youth programs at Youth Speaks, Urban Arts Partnership, and New Design High School. As an independent curator and researcher, she has produced exhibitions and public programs in collaboration with Pro Arts Gallery, Incline Gallery, Open Engagement, and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. She is currently working on a new body of work that examines black displacement and the varied intersections of place and race in San Francisco, California, her hometown.
Liz Sanders is a documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Program at the International Center for Photography. Her work focuses on the intersection of tradition and modernity and how that affects individual and collective identities, especially within communities experiencing change. A 2017 Magnum Foundation Winter Fellowship recipient, Sanders has been collaborating with young members of the Yemeni community in New York on a project using photography to explore themes of identity, home, history, and coming of age. More recently, she has embarked on a project exploring her own identity and ties to the South in relation to her father’s struggle with dementia and his boyhood in the mountains of Arkansas.