Skowhegan

Our public programs take place in various locations and temporalities. During the summer, the Barbara Lee Lecture Series is held at the School in Maine; they are free and open to the public. Throughout the rest of the year, we have Skowhegan NYC, a space in New York where we organize programs guided by artists and collaborators.

Prior to 2014, we presented collaborative, itinerant programs until opening our permanent space. Since then, our public events and collaborations continue to grow in dialogue with artists and thinkers, our esteemed alumni group Skowhegan Alliance, neighbor organizations, and peer institutions and schools around the world that share similar interests. The Library serves as a repository for these public programs and archives materials translated into visual, audio, and textual exercises and projects.

The public programs are based on a series of study lines that emerge as a connective tissue between the School and our conversations with the artistic community at large. The study lines vary over time depending on the School’s dynamics and interests in relation to what’s happening around us.

If you want to learn more about our public programs you can subscribe to our Newsletter. You can also get information about how to get to our space in NYC here.

Study Line: Hearing Voices

Hearing Voices focuses the attention on words, whispers, sounds, or hidden voices. Through the lens of Hearing Voices, we glean insights into our research process, and our archives. From methods shared by our artist collaborators, we learn how to become more receptive to the multitude of voices in and around us. This study line links public events, workshops, readings, books, and also research.

Skowhegan is a school of many voices.

Study Line: Ecologies of Production

Ecologies of Production calls for slowing down and surviving exhaustion. The lives and careers of artists are always associated with being present, performing for others, or exhibiting their work. Although all these factors are important, they create a climate of intense competition which is heavily influenced by the market driven system in which we all participate. Ecologies of Production propose alternatives for healing, working, and living.

Skowhegan is a school of many alternatives.

Study Line: Flexibility Muscle

Skowhegan is about generosity and friendship. We explore definitions of love in the plural form, strategies of manifestation, intimacies, and forms of transmission and listening. We also question the codes and conventions present in relationships, whether tied to the personal, the collective, place, or space.

Flexibility Muscle connects artists and artistic projects that explore through being, doing, and making as a practice and process of collective solidarity. It serves as a motto for collaborations with neighbors, peer organizations, and other learning institutions.

Skowhegan is a school of many gestures.

Study Line: Intergenerational Crosscurrents

History cannot be linear; it is constructed in fragments. Skowhegan’s archives extend into images, recordings, and testimonials from the past while it is reimagined, reconstructed, and performed in the present by artists and researchers each year. Methodologies for expanding the archives are an integral part of our public programs. They trigger stories that connect us across generations and allow for rigorous research imagined as Intergenerational Crosscurrents.

Skowhegan is a school of many temporalities.