Join ICP’s Curator at Large Isolde Brielmaier, Our Body Politic host and author Farai Chideya, and producer and writer Tanya Selvaratnam for an evening celebrating the release of Brielmaier’s Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College publication, Culture as Catalyst. The publication includes contributionss from leading voices on visual culture—Alexandra Bell, Kimberly Drew, Eric Gottesman, Lyle Ashton Harris, and more—the collection spans critical topics from mass incarceration, feminism, whiteness, and food justice.
This program is free with a suggested donation of $5. Reserve your signed copy of Culture as Catalyst (Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College) through ICP’s shop.
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About Culture as Catalyst
Culture as Catalyst (Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College) is a collection of dialogues and new writings by artists, scholars, activists, and influential thinkers on urgent issues of our time. This critical publication accompanies the 2017–2019 Accelerator Series of public conversations held at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, convened by then Tang Curator-at-Large Isolde Brielmaier. Topics include whiteness, migration, mass incarceration, feminism, monuments, citizenship, cultural appropriation, forgiveness, and food justice. The innovative thinkers that gathered for these community conversations remind us of the power of civil discourse and how genuine listening, critical thinking, and honest speaking are key to building empathy and knowledge. Culture as Catalyst is a compilation of their provocations—a compendium of diverse ways to make new connections, craft pathways to understanding, and spark change.
Contributors: Jessica Andrews, Amir Baradaran, Alexandra Bell, Dan Borelli, Farai Chideya, Matthew Cooke, Renee Cox, Kate Daughdrill, Kimberly Drew, Sam Durant, Natalie Frank, Eric Gottesman, Hassan Hajjaj, Lyle Ashton Harris, Anthony Ryan Hatch, Elizabeth Hinton, Duron Jackson, Michael Joo, Titus Kaphar, David Karp, Treva B. Lindsey, Matthew D. Morrison, Richard Mosse, Karyn Olivier, Leah Penniman, Johnny Perez, Amy Richards, Minita Sanghvi, Tanya Selvaratnam, and Dara Silverman.
About the Program Format
This program will take place on Zoom. Those who register to attend will receive a confirmation email with a link located at the bottom of the email under ‘Important Information’ to join the lecture through a computer or mobile device.
We recommend participants download the Zoom app on their device prior to the program. Learn how to download the latest version of Zoom to your computer or mobile device.
If you have not received the Zoom link by 2 PM on the day of the lecture or if you have questions about the virtual lecture, please contact: programs@icp.org.
Speaker Bios
For over a decade Isolde Brielmaier has worked internationally as a curator and cultural strategist, collaborating with noted contemporary artists, art institutions, companies and individuals to position them in the center of culture via headlining projects, cultural programming, social impact initiatives and partnerships that contextualize each entity in meaningful ways to drive buzz and engagement. Her diverse experience and broad reach highlights her ability to integrate and customize a global aesthetic into multiple platforms including art, design, architecture, technology, scholarship, fashion, publishing, public and private real estate as well as philanthropy.
Currently, Brielmaier is the inaugural Curator-at-Large at the International Center for Photography (ICP) in New York City. After six years as Executive Director and Curator of Arts, Culture & Community at Westfield World Trade Center, she is now the national advisor for Unbail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW), a role in which she advises on artist projects and installations, cultural events, strategic and community partnerships across the organization. Isolde is also Professor of Critical Studies in Tisch's Department of Photography, Imaging and Emerging Media at New York University, and continues to work on a range of cultural projects that bridge both the public and private sectors including commission based projects for Amazon Web Services | Smithsonian and the Peninsula Hotel Group. She serves as Editor at Large at Air Mail, Graydon Carter’s new media venture and speaks regularly on topics related to art, culture and social impact.
Isolde has been profiled and featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Elle, Vogue, Modern Luxury, WNYC Radio, CNN, the Washington Post, Galerie Magazine, Cultured, and Whitewall among others.
Throughout her career, Brielmaier has collaborated with noted contemporary artists including Ellen Gallagher, Leonardo Drew, Richard Mosse, Ivan Navarro, Wangechi Mutu, Bill Viola, Fred Wilson, and Bharti Kher, to name a few. She has written extensively on contemporary art and culture, including several exhibition catalogues, journal articles as well as artist monographs. She has developed and contributed to contemporary art and culture programs and platforms for a broad range of organizations including Amazon (AWS), Peninsula Hotel Group, Valentino, LifeWater, COACH, Richard Meier Architects | SDS Procida, Versace, Moet Hennessy USA, Wilfredo Rosado, Gucci, New York magazine, the Prospect New Orleans biennial as well as the Armory Show/VOLTA NY, CIRCA, Puerto Rico, and ARCO Contemporary Art Fair in Madrid, Spain, among others.
Previously, Brielmaier has worked for the Guggenheim Museum, the Bronx Museum of Art, and as Chief Curator for the SCAD Museum of Art. In 2016, she was named to a three-year appointment as Curator-at-Large at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College and in December of 2016 she was named to the Board of Trustees of the New Museum. She is deeply committed to the promotion of social justice and human rights, specifically global women’s issues and criminal justice reform. Brielmaier holds a PhD from Columbia University and lives in New York City
Farai Chideya is the creator and host of Our Body Politic, a nationally syndicated public radio show centering Black women and all women of color as we seek to build a better nation and world. She's the author of six books, the most recent of which is The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption. Chideya has covered every Presidential election from 1996 on; worked for FivethirtyEight, NPR, CNN, ABC, and NPR; is the journalism program officer for the Ford Foundation.
Tanya Selvaratnam is a writer and an Emmy-nominated and multiple Webby-winning producer. She has produced for the Vision & Justice Project, Joy To The Polls, Aubin Pictures, Glamour Women of the Year, The Meteor, For Freedoms, Rubell Family Collection, The Shed, and Planned Parenthood. Selvaratnam is the author of THE BIG LIE and the forthcoming Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, Vogue, Glamour, CNN, The Art Newspaper, SheKnows, and McSweeney’s. She received her graduate and undergraduate degrees in Chinese language and legal history from Harvard University.
