April 21–22, 2023
The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to present the 2023 Max Wasserman Forum: Altered Access which will be held April 21–22, 2023. Altered Access brings together artists, educators, and curators to discuss current disability discourse within the arts and museum institutions. Altered Access will consist of two days of hybrid programming including a virtual keynote address and three hybrid panel discussions.
Centering voices in the arts and disability practice, Altered Access considers aspects of digital access and spatial design, and how museums can serve as places of healing. The forum will also explore other creative approaches that implement accessible, inclusive practices, which every organizational and institutional model can apply in developing a fresh look at how disabled artists, audiences, and museums can work together.
Virtual keynote address: Park McArthur
Participating artists: Panteha Abareshi, Owólabi Aboyade, Emily Barker, Taraneh Fazeli, Kevin Gotkin, Sara Hendren, Christopher Jones and Liza Sylvestre, Noëmi Lakmaier, Yo-Yo Lin, Cannach MacBride, Carmen Papalia, and Finnegan Shannon
Full schedule of events
Building What Doesn’t Harm: Emily Barker
Friday, April 21, 5:30pm EDT
In-person and live-streamed
Setting the stage for this forum, Emily Barker will consider the built environment, economic systems, and societal norms that are damaging and inadequate for every person, plant, and animal on earth.
Virtual Keynote Address: Park McArthur
Friday, April 21, 6:30–7:30pm EDT
Livestreamed
Park McArthur is an artist who experiments with personal and social meanings of debility, delay, and dependency under the guidance and instruction of disability. McArthur’s artwork and teachings center care and access and explore ongoing relationships with buildings, structures, and spaces.
To Build: Noëmi Lakmaier, Carmen Papalia, and Finnegan Shannon
Saturday morning session
April 22, 10–11:30am EDT
Moderated by Sara Hendren
This panel includes three creative practitioners whose work embodies speculative, friction-ful, playful, and critical dialogue with the built world.
The Body: Panteha Abareshi, Christopher Jones and Liza Sylvestre, and Yo-Yo Lin
Saturday afternoon session
April 22, 1–2:30pm EDT
Moderated by Kevin Gotkin
These panelists create visual systems that make visible and reinvent how bodies move in spaces. This discussion will focus on the body as a mode of transformation, creation, and embodiment.
To Heal: Owólabi Aboyade and Cannach MacBride
Saturday evening session
April 22, 3:30–5pm EDT
Moderated by Taraneh Fazelli
This panel brings together creative practitioners who investigate—in their collaborations and individually—what it means to use the space of art for healing themselves, their communities, and natural kin, as well as for instantiating new modes of care.
Parallel Program: Flashlight Project (FP)
Friday, April 21, 3–4pm EDT
Liza Sylvestre with Christopher Jones
Join us in a “conversation” organized around a gesture of visibility and identification. FP is interested in how exploring the intersection of learned systems of body and language disrupts systems of normativity.
Accessibility information
– All in-person attendees will be required to wear masks at all times, with the exception of actively eating or drinking.
– ASL interpreters and real-time closed captioning in English will be available.
– The on-site location is wheelchair accessible.
– Additional guidelines and participation information is forthcoming.
About the Max Wasserman Forum
The Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art was established in memory of Max Wasserman (MIT Class of 1935), a founding member of the Council for the Arts at MIT. This public forum was endowed through the generosity of the late Jeanne Wasserman and addresses critical issues in contemporary art and culture through the participation of renowned scholars, artists, and arts professionals. The forum is organized and presented by the MIT List Visual Arts Center.
