Public Projects in Practice

Micaela Martegani, Executive Director and Chief Curator, More Art, New York

Publishing Projects in Practice: Micaela Martegani in conversation with Marc Fischer and Jessica Gogan
October 3, Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State Street, 7th floor
5:30 pm refreshments, 6:00 pm conversation begins

Commissioning Public Projects: Creating Methodologies of Engagement
October 4, Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State Street, 7th floor
9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Micaela Martegani has been working in the field of modern and contemporary art as an art historian, writer and curator since 1990. She pursued a M.A./Ph.D. degree in art history at New York University, has taught contemporary art at Pratt Institute, and is now adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York. After ten years as an independent curator, Martegani founded the nonprofit organization More Art devoted to community-based  and socially-engaged public art projects in 2004, as a way to help make contemporary art more accessible to the general public. For More Art Martegani has curated many public art projects with highly respected artists, among others, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Andres Serrano, Joan Jonas, Kimsooja, Ernesto Pujol, Xaviera Simmons, Pablo Helguera, Anna Gaskell, Anthony Goicolea, Michael Joo, Tony Oursler, Michael Rakowitz, Tim Rollins, and Gary Simmons.

Marc Fischer is a Chicago-based artist. Since 1998, Fischer has been a member of the long-running artist group Temporary Services, along with artist Brett Bloom. Temporary Services has produced over 110 publications and a similar number of exhibitions and projects. In 2008 Temporary Services founded a publishing imprint and web-based store named Half Letter Press. Fischer was also a co-founder of Mess Hall, an experimental cultural center in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, which closed in 2013 after ten years of programming. In 2007, Fischer founded the initiative Public Collectors, which is based upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible. Public Collectors asks individuals that have had the luxury to amass, organize, and inventory these materials to help reverse this lack by making their collections public.

Jessica Gogan is an independent curator and educator and director of Instituto MESA, Rio de Janeiro. Recent projects include: Publicness in Art, a series of critical seminars and workshops in three distinct Brazilian regions; Contemporary Laboratory: Proposals and Discoveries of What Art Is (or Could Be) exploring themes of art, pedagogy and politics for young artists with the Latin American art institution Casa Daros in collaboration with Coletivo E; Experimental Nucleus of Education and Art at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, evaluation of the pedagogic project of the 8th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil and the exhibition and residency by Brazilian artist José Rufino at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA, where Gogan was formerly director of education and curator of special projects. She received her Ph.D. candidate in Art History from the University of Pittsburgh where her research focused on socially engaged art, curatorship and pedagogy in Brazilian institutional contexts.