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Robert Smith III
Robert joined the Art Institute of Chicago as Assistant Curator of Education, Learning and Interpretation in October 2015. He has previously held positions at the Walker Art Center and the Minnesota Historical Society. A graduate of Brown University, he is currently pursuing a PhD in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. His current research investigates the political, economic, and aesthetic histories of two emerging fields—creative placemaking and social practice art—as they have become institutionalized in arts education, museums, government and urban planning, philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, and other arenas. His dissertation focuses on the diverse practices of Black artists based in Minneapolis and Chicago as they grapple with the persistence of structural racism and economic inequality.
"If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them. Don’t let them explore you until they’ve explored the secret universes of books."
- John Waters
John Ploof
John is a socially engaged artist and educator. He works with participatory projects that utilize art, design and visual culture to galvanize activity around social issues. John produced over twenty site-specific projects with the four-person collective Haha (1988-2008). He has authored and co-edited three books on social issues and contemporary art: The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production (MIT Press + SAIC Press, 2007); With Love from Haha: Essays and Notes on a Collective Practice (WhiteWalls + University of Chicago Press, 2008); and Art and Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons (Routledge, 2012). He is Professor of Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mark Diaz
Mark is the Program Manager at Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education where he oversees in-school teacher and artist partnership programs. In this capacity he provides professional development for teachers and artists to deepen pedagogical arts practice in the classroom. Previously, he was Development Director/Media Instructor for Cooperative Image Group, as well as a teaching artist for CAPE. He has also been Business Manager and Arts Instructor at Street-Level Youth Media. Mark received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois Chicago.
Guest Facilitators
Daniel Tucker
Daniel works as an artist, writer and organizer developing documentaries, publications and events inspired by his interest in social movements and the people and places from which they emerge. His writings and lectures on the intersections of art and politics and his collaborative art projects have been published and presented widely. Tucker earned his MFA from University of Illinois at Chicago and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He collaborates on the Never The Same curatorial and archive project with Rebecca Zorach and recently completed his first feature-length video essay Future Perfect: Time Capsules in Reagan Country. He is currently curating the exhibition and event series Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements. Tucker is an Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director in Social and Studio Practices at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia.
Thomas Kong
Thomas is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A licensed architect in Singapore and Associate Member of the American Institute of Architects, Thomas has been a studio critic at key institutions around the world. His research and creative practice are centered on Asian urbanism and the role of the arts in design education. Most recently, out of 200 entries from over 40 countries, his proposal to reimagine the Helsinki tramline as a cultural space for art, design and community-building was listed amongst the top 8 entries. Thomas was also inducted in 2015 into the Placemaking Leadership Council of the U.S. based organization Project for Public Space in recognition of his work on creative placemaking. Thomas is also the third Jaap Bakema Fellow, Netherlands Architecture Institute in 2009, Singapore’s School of the Arts (SOTA) Distinguished Fellow and co-recipient of the Motorola Foundation grant for his community-based art and design studio in Beppu, Japan in 2012.
“I see architecture as a form of reflective practice.
To be an architect for me is to engage in a lifelong process
of questioning and searching that traces the arc of
my personal growth and development.”
William Estrada
William Estrada was born to immigrant parents and grew up assembling memories in California, Mexico, and Chicago. His teaching and art making practice focuses on exploring inequality, migration, historical passivity, cultural recognition, self-preservation and media representation in marginalized communities and contested spaces. He document and engages experiences in public/private spaces to transform, question, and make connections to established and organic systems through discussion, creation, and promotion of counter narratives.
William's practice attempts to record complex stories, ignored spaces, and the on-going struggles to content urban life, academia, and the mainstream. His work is a discourse of existing images, text, and politics that appoints his audience to critically re-examine the meanings of their surroundings. As a teacher, artist, cultural worker, and urban anthropologist he reports, records, reveals, and imparts experiences you find in academic books, school halls, city streets, television sets, teacher lounges, kitchen tables, barrios, college campuses, and in the conversations of close friends.
His current research is focused on developing community based street workshops that begin to question power structures of race, economy, and cultural access.