Terms of employment for artists and culture workers are typically determined by a set of expectations based on a long history of uncertain and precarious conditions. Full-time salaried positions, regular working hours, health insurance, and retirement savings plans form the exception, not the rule. With an uptick in highly visible campaigns, organized by culture workers at major arts institutions around the world, advocating for more equitable labor practices in the arts, conversations about the value of cultural labor (and how that labor is compensated) are moving to the forefront. Are there examples closer to home that help us better assess the relationship between art and labor?
Alternate Currents’ lunch-time conversation series brings together Art Historian, Alexandra Cardon; Producing Artistic Director of Theatre at The Union for Contemporary Art, Denise Chapman; and Artist and Educator, Tyler Swain for a candid discussion about the value of cultural labor, why it's monetized differently than other forms of labor, and strategies for collective organizing and cooperation that make employment conditions for culture workers less precarious in Omaha. Bring a brown-bag lunch, come with questions, and join the conversation.
Kindly RSVP so we can plan ahead: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/panel-discussion-art-labor-registration-81384592507
Alternate Currents opens space for conversation, ideation, and action around national and international discussions in the arts that have a profound impact at the local level. Alternate Currents exists both on- and off-line in the form of a dedicated online resource and lunch-time conversation series.
You can read up on the panel topic with the online resources found on the Alternate Currents blog page: www.amplifyarts.org/alternate-currents
Free and open to the public. This program is presented with the support of the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.
About the panelists:
Alexandra Cardon: Alexandra M. Cardon is Eighteenth Century Art Historian. Her focus is on French Academic art at the turn of the eighteenth century. She currently teaches at the University of Omaha Nebraska in the Art and Art History Department and is working on her Ph.D thesis at the Graduate Center, CUNY, In New York City. She holds an MA in Art History and International Relations from the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland, an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art from the University College of London, England. She previously worked in the Modern and Contemporary Art Department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, and taught at the Memphis College of Art, TN.
Denise Chapman: Denise Chapman is an Omaha based Theatre practitioner. She graduated from Creighton University with a BA in theatre. She went on to receive her MFA from the Theatre Conservatory at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. She returned to Omaha in 2006 and worked with Blue Barn’s Witching hour for three years as Co-Artistic director/ensemble member and at the Omaha Community Playhouse as the director of education and outreach. She is an alumni of the fellowship program at the Union for Contemporary Art. She was an Artist in Residence at the Carver Bank project, a collaboration between Bemis and Theaster Gates and “Liveness is Critical” at the Bemis Center. Currently she is the Producing Artistic Director of Theatre at The Union for Contemporary Art and an adjunct professor at Metro Community College and the University of Nebraska Omaha.
Tyler Swain: Tyler Swain is a local artist, educator, and former Delegate, Union Organizer, and Organizer Trainer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He is a founding member of the Nebraska IWW General Membership Branch (GMB), has served on the General Organizing Board (GOB), General Executive Board (GEB) and General Defense Committee (GDC) of the Industrial Workers of the World, and as a Delegate for the Nebraska GMB, and Delegate at Large for the Wisconsin GMB during the IWW General Convention held in 2014.