Department Projects
emerge: journal of arts administration and policy
emerge is an online journal produced yearly by graduate students in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Arts Administration and Policy program, featuring collaborations with guest editors from the SAIC community. It features original, pioneering theory and practice in the field of arts administration and related domains. This journal seeks to foster engagement with issues related to arts administration as a professional practice in order to broaden the overall scope of discourse.
Visit the emerge website to read the most current journal.
SAIC Arts Administration Enrichment Fund
The Enrichment Fund provides financial support for graduate student projects to strengthen research and contribute to the vitality and success of the Master of Arts in Arts Administration and Policy (MAAAP) program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Directed by an advisory board of current MAAAP students, the Enrichment Fund is a peer to peer grant-making platform geared toward supporting the unique and varied needs of emerging arts administrators and curators.
Visit the Enrichment Fund website to learn more.
Management Studio Projects
Inherit Chicago (Fall 2016 - Spring 2017)
Inherit Chicago is the first intercultural citywide festival of its kind, happening in October 2017. The month-long festival is happening across 30 neighborhood-based heritage museums and cultural centers and includes exhibitions, performances, culinary events and discussions. The festival is produced by the Chicago Cultural Alliance.
For this project, the student team worked across the Fall and Spring semesters to help shape and facilitate festival concept design sessions and build collaborative programming ideas with more than 30 member organizations. In the Spring semester, the team worked extensively on the festival branding and to develop the narrative and film elements of the festival's video. Several team members supported the festival production. See links below.
Northern Triangle Exhibition (Spring 2016)
In 2014, more than 68,000 unaccompanied children were apprehended on the U.S./Mexico border, double the number from the previous year. Of this group, the majority are from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Known as the Northern Triangle, this region has a long and complicated relationship with the United States. Originally commissioned by Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (Austin, TX), Northern Triangle is an exhibition created by Borderland Collective that opens a space for constructive dialogue and exchange around the current Central American refugee crisis along the U.S./Mexico border and the long and complicated history of U.S. intervention in which it is irrevocably entangled. (Curatorial notes)
Rock and the Bean (Fall 2015)
Rock and the Bean was a work in progress installation of salvaged historic raw limestone rocks from the shoreline of the South Side of Chicago. Conceptualized as part of a forthcoming pavilion on Montrose Beach designed by Dutch-Nigerian architect Kunle Adeyemi/NLE, the "pop up" installation was part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015 and displayed and activated next to Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate (affectionately called "the bean"). The project was a collaboration between the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and NLE.
Homan Square Story Share (Fall 2014 - Spring 2015)
The Homan Square Story Share project is a partnership with Continuing Studies and the Shapiro Center for Collaboration to collect and archive stories in the Homan Square neighborhood. The project seeks to connect SAIC to the North Lawndale community through listening.
Cosmosis (Fall 2014-Spring 2015)
Curated by Steven Bridges for the Hyde Park Art Center and Contemporary Arts Council, Cosmosis investigated how the cosmos and the field of Cosmology continue to inspire artistic production and exert influence on human understanding of the universe—and our place therein.
Around Center (Fall 2013-Spring 2014)
Combining photography, sculpture and video projection with civic engagement, Jan Tichy’s work reveals contradictions and hidden truths in our lived environment and the larger cultural, social and political sphere. For aroundcenter, Tichy focused on the Chicago Cultural Center — formerly Chicago’s main public library, and now home to the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events – where thousands of free cultural events happen annually.
Spheres of Cultural Valuation Symposiums
Navigating Repatriation (Spring 2022)
From a cross-section of North American institutions, this public conversation brings together leading cultural researchers and practitioners for a dialogue on displaced art, repatriation, and collections policies. Produced by Britton Farrell (MAAAP 2023), Michelle Davo Ortiz (MAAAP/MAAH 2024), and Lauren Woolf (MAAAP/MAAH 2024).
Caring Tactics for Narrative Representation (Spring 2022)
Colonial practices remain pervasive within the walls of cultural institutions: stolen objects from across the globe are divided into museum wings and categorized by imagined identities. This standard both curates non-Western cultures as monoliths and canonizes a Euro-centric worldview. “Caring Tactics for Narrative Representation” offers perspectives from Dr. Meranda Roberts (Indigenous curator, researcher, and advocate) and Dr. Onur Öztürk (Assistant Professor of Art History at Columbia College Chicago). Öztürk and Roberts will respectively discuss strategies and methodologies for re-presenting Islamic and Native American art and objects in institutions.
Breathing Together (Spring 2022)
A panel discussion on the combined power of technology and culture for the post-pandemic future. How can we re-imagine, re-evaluate, and re-identify cultural spaces? By viewing this question through the lens of co-inspiration, the discussion will serve as a theoretical foundation for envisioning the future of arts programming and organizational leadership. Please join our conversation between artists, curators, organizers, and educators. Hosted by Arts Administration and Policy graduate students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in partnership with the Department's emerge: journal of arts administration and policy. Produced by Inés Arango Guingue, Yesenia Bello, Jakki Cafarelli, Lindsey Hayakawa, Megan Morton, Benita Nnachortam, Jane Valentin Grossman, Charlie Xie, and Jiani Zhu (all MAAAP 2023).
Activating Arts Administration: Key Frameworks Podcasts
