Beverly Naidus Socially engaged art and pedagogy for these challenging times

Beverly Naidus will describe an innovative & interdisciplinary approach to teaching studio art with a socially engaged perspective that is described in her book, “Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame” (New Village Press, 2009). She will illustrate the lecture with examples of her courses in Eco-art; Body Image and Art; Cultural identity and Art; Labor, Globalization & Art; Art in a Time of War; Art and Global Justice & the Artist as Visionary and Dreamer. She will also share strategies being used by peers, the controversies raised by these pedagogical strategies and how current events have encouraged more art programs to engage students in this way and more artists to become part of the resistance.

Biography:

Beverly Naidus is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and educator, known for her interactive, site-specific installations to provoke dialog and storytelling. Inspired by lived experience, topics in her artwork include environmental illness, climate change, unemployment, the alienation of consumer culture, nuclear nightmares, body hate, cultural identity, visions for the future and global justice. She has exhibited her work, guest lectured and led workshops all over North America and in Europe. Her work has been discussed in many journals and books. She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame, a narrative collage that explores the motivations of teaching and making art for social change and includes the stories of 33 other practitioners. She has been a teaching artist in many New York City museums and a visiting artist/lecturer at Carleton College, Goddard College, Hampshire College and the Institute for Social Ecology. She has had tenure at California State University, Long Beach and the University of Washington, Tacoma. She facilitates a unique, interdisciplinary, socially engaged, studio art curriculum at the latter campus. Her collective, ARTifACTs, is developing a series of collaborative and interactive projects with the theme, “We Almost Didn’t Make It” that deals with our uncertainties about the future from the perspective of our descendants.