Nisa Mackie is Director and Curator of Education and Public programs at the Walker Art Center.
In fall 2020, the Walker Art Center and Art Resources Transfer (A.R.T.) co-presented a residency with artist collective Studio K.O.S. Through workshops and a public event, the project foregrounded the group’s decades-long practice of collaborative pedagogy and its transformative social impact.
In Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts, Aruna D’Souza looks into three art world protests—from 1969, 1979, and 2017—that raise troubling questions about art and race in America. Here, D’Souza speaks with the Walker’s Nisa Mackie about what conversations should come next. In doing so, she charts the beginnings of a roadmap for the many art institutions that have experienced protest and controversy over the past few years or are thinking seriously about equity and culture change.
In our moment of cultural reckoning, news headlines draw much public attention, but what do long-lasting conversations look like in the wake of these media flashpoints? Monica Zimmerman, education director at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, discusses her institution’s response to sexual misconduct allegations made against an exhibited artist, Chuck Close.
What is the role of an art museum’s education department in an increasingly complex cultural sphere? In a new series of interviews with museum educators, Kathryn Potts, Director of Education at the Whitney Museum, discusses the rebuilding of the Whitney’s educational program around an artist-centric mission and its innovative approach to exploring ideas and activism across museum spaces.
