Workshop in Cultural Affairs

The Workshop in Cultural Affairs series advances the Center for Cultural Affairs’ priorities around training, research, and field-building. These biweekly workshops will highlight researchers at the O'Neill School, the greater Indiana University community, and beyond. The workshop connects cultural affairs experts together in a forum for scholarly discussion, debate, and exploration of the important issues being faced in the field of cultural affairs.

Léonie Hénaut, French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Jennifer Lena, Columbia University
February 7, 12pm EST

Topic: "Polyoccupationalism: Expertise Stretch and Status Stretch in the Post-Industrial Era"

Léonie Hénaut is Associate Professor of Sociology at CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research, and at Sciences Po Paris. She studies work, occupations, and organizations in the cultural and healthcare industries, with a focus on occupational dynamics and organizational change.

Jennifer C. Lena is Associate Professor of Arts Administration and Sociology at Columbia University. She is author of three books: Banding Together (2012), Entitled (2019), and Measuring Culture (2020). She currently serves on the Research Advisory Committee for the SSRC Arts Research with Communities of Color, and on the Faculty Advisory Board of Columbia University Press. She co-edits the Culture and Economic Life book series at Stanford University Press, and serves on the editorial boards of the journals DIY and Poetics.

Andrew Zitcer, Drexel University and Johanna Taylor, Arizona State University
February 21, 12pm EST

Topic: "Creative Placemaking in Transition: A Look Back, A Look Forward"

Andrew Zitcer is an associate professor at Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, where he teaches Arts Administration & Museum Leadership and directs the Urban Strategy graduate program. His research interests explore economic and cultural democracy. His first book, Practicing Cooperation: Mutual Aid Beyond Capitalism, was recently published by University of Minnesota press. A forthcoming volume, Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life (co-edited with Tom Borrup) will appear in 2024 from Routledge.

Johanna K. Taylor is Associate Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her work is grounded in a core value of art as catalyzing force in advancing justice in daily life. Taylor’s research explores questions of cultural equity through the intersection of art, community, policy, and place including in her book TheArt Museum Redefined: Power, Opportunity, and Community Engagement. Taylor is co-founder of CAIR (Cross Sector Artists in Residence) Lab, a creative collective dedicated to building more just places through arts-led, cross-sectoral collaboration. Before turning to academia, she spent over a decade working as an arts administrator.

Joanna Woronkowicz, Indiana University
March 6, 12pm EST

Live Q&A Interview by Michael Rushton of Joanna Woronkowicz on her forthcoming book,
"Being an Artist in America: How Artists Build Careers and What Society Can Do to Support Them"

Dr. Joanna Woronkowicz is a cultural economist who conducts research on artist labor markets and cultural facilities investments. She joined O’Neill in 2013, and prior to that served as the senior research officer at the National Endowment for the Arts. Woronkowicz is co-founder and faculty director of the Center for Cultural Affairs and co-director of the Arts, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab. Her first book Building Better Arts Facilities was published by Routledge in 2015. She is currently working on a book manuscript on Being an Artist in America.

Victoria Durrer, University College Dublin
March 20, 12pm EDT

Topic: “Shared Spaces? Researching Arts Policy on the Island of Ireland”

Victoria Durrer is Ad Astra Research Fellow in Cultural Policy at University College Dublin. Holding degrees in Art History (BA, MA) and Sociology (PhD), her work is interdisciplinary, socio-historically informed and often based on collaborative research designs, data collection and analysis with research participants. Her work focuses on how the spatial and relational dynamics of administration and policy both shape and are challenged by artistic practice as social, cultural, and professional endeavours. She is co-founder of the all-island research network, Cultural Policy Observatory Ireland. Her research has received funding from the Higher Education Authority, the Irish Research Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh (UK), and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) in addition to sector-based funding.

Ziv Epstein, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
April 3, 12pm EDT

Topic: “Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction”

Ziv Epstein is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. In his research, he focuses on translating insights from design and the social sciences into the development of sociotechnical systems such as generative AI and social media platforms. Ziv has published papers in venues such as the general interest journals Nature, Science and PNAS , as well as top-tier computer science proceedings such as CHI and CSCW. His work has also received widespread media attention in outlets like the New York Times, Scientific American, and NPR. He is also a practicing multimedia artist whose work has been featured at Ars Electronica, the MIT Museum, and Burning Man.

Stephen Reily, Founding Director, Remuseum
April 17, 12pm EDT

Topic: “Accountability for American Art Museums: Do They Care More About Objects or the Public”

Stephen Reily is the Founding Director of Remuseum, an independent research project housed at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which seeks to promote innovation among art museums across the United States. Stephen is an attorney and entrepreneur who served as Director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky from 2017 to 2021. At the Speed, Reily invigorated a newly renovated museum with a mission of public service and dramatically increased both contributed revenue and accessibility. During his tenure, the Speed worked with Guest Curator Allison Glenn and Community Engagement Strategist Toya Northington to present the exhibition “Promise, Witness, Remembrance,” cited as a model of relevance and innovation as the museum responded in real time to the killing of Breonna Taylor and a year of protests in Louisville. In 2022, Reily, Glenn, and Northington co-wrote a book documenting the exhibition and that work. A longtime supporter of museums and the arts, Reily currently serves on the Boards of the Creative Capital Foundation and the American Federation of Arts.

A graduate of Yale College and Stanford Law School, Stephen Reily clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens before beginning his career as an entrepreneur, co-founding IMC Licensing, a global leader in brand licensing that has generated over $6 billion in consumer product sales for the Fortune 500 brands it represents. As a social entrepreneur, Reily was longtime Chair of the Greater Louisville Project, which for 20 years used data to catalyze civic progress in Louisville, and partnered with the Louisville Urban League to create the Reily Reentry Program to support expungement programs for citizens of Kentucky.

Workshop Alums

Giacomo Negro, Emory University

Nicole Cohen, University of Toronto

Greig de Peuter, Wilfrid Laurie

Brent Lutes, U.S. Copyright Office

Felix Koenig, Carnegie Mellon

Patricia Banks, Mount Holyoke College

James Pawelski and Katherine Cotter, University of Pennsylvania

Diane Ragsdale and Shannon Litzenberger, Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Ken Elpus, University of Maryland

Jennifer Novak-Leonard, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Laurence Dubuc, MassCulture

Wen Guo, Elon University

Johanna Taylor, Arizona State University

Kate Preston Keeney, College of Charleston

Mark Taylor, University of Sheffield

Eleonora Redaelli, University of Oregon

Amy Whitaker, New York University

Amanda J. Ashley, Boise State University

Jennifer Benoit-Bryan, Slover Linett Audience Research

Jakob Brounstein, University of California, Berkeley

Bronwyn Coate, RMIT University

Susan Dumais, Lehman College

Tal Feder, Sapir College

Alexandre Frenette, Vanderbilt University

Carl Grodach, Monash University

Steven Hadley, National University of Ireland Galway

Mirae Kim, George Mason University

Brian Kisida, University of Missouri

Carolyn Loh, Wayne State University

Lénia Marques, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Candace Miller, University of North Carolina

Alisa Moldavanova, Wayne State University

Doug Noonan, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Susan Oman, University of Sheffield

Jonathan Paquette, University of Ottawa

Michael Rushton, Indiana University

Michael Seman, Colorado State University

Rachel Skaggs, Ohio State University

Tamás Szabados, Eötvös Loránd University

Neville Vakharia, Drexel University

Qingfang Wang, University of California Riverside

Hannah Wohl, University of California, Santa Barbara

Joanna Woronkowicz, Indiana University

Artwork credit: Banner image by photographer, James Brosher.

Workshop in Cultural Affairs