New online library

Emails like these are so incredibly familiar, so common. Reading them has become a habit, almost a routine. But what’s going on today is unprecedented. It’s radically unfamiliar. Many of our habits and routines don’t feel very relevant right now.  

Many art institutions are realizing that their habits and routines need to be significantly re-adjusted as well. How, exactly, is not clear to anyone quite yet. And perhaps it’s still far too soon to even start thinking about it. But when faced with telling its audience to not visit their exhibitions or attend their events, any art institution finds itself in new territory. We wonder how to remain a public forum for art and ideas that can serve a socially-distanced community.

CCA Wattis Institute is one such forum, and, over the past few years, we’ve been asking ourselves some questions that feel relevant today: How can we bring more art to more people but also enrich the depth and density of our community’s access to artists and ideas? How can we foster a sense of closer proximity to artists? 

And so, over the past six months, we’ve been working on building a new online library: 

wattis.org/library

It’s a place where you can dig deep: watch videos, listen to lectures, read essays, and feel a sense of proximity to the artists and thinkers of our time. 

Watch, listen to, and read Abbas Akhavan, Dodie Bellamy, Charles Burnett, Manthia Diawara, Andrew Durbin, Vincent Fecteau, Jack Halberstam, Joan Jonas, Isaac Julien, Michelle Kuo, Pamela M. Lee, Cinthia Marcelle, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Fred Moten, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Seth Price, Fanny Singer, Laetitia Sonami, Young Joon Kwak & Kim Ye, among many others. 

These people might be spread out around the world, but their voices and ideas are also close-by and always accessible at wattis.org/library.

We are grateful to Christopher Squier and David Reinfurt for working tirelessly to make this happen.