What a year it’s been! Chaos has been reigning in Washington distracting us while the world burns and floods. It is truly disorienting and those of us in the arts and academia are deciding between preemptive interpretation of executive orders and our own presumably important daily work. No easy decisions, and no simple strategy. It is indeed a time to carefully consider priorities.

And then on a personal level, Emily and I had a beautiful baby in December and are loving it and learning everyday. To quote my own past project, is an “immersive life practice” if there ever was one. 

Alongside that, the University of the Arts, the school I took a job at in the summer of 2023 abruptly closed in the summer of 2024. Gone are people’s careers, student’s plans and my own 7 year contract thrown out the window. I wrote about the whole debacle in an essay called “Dislocated Art Worker” for the new Philadelphia-focused print magazine Grate: An Arts Adjacent Quarterly. If you aren’t local or don’t have a copy and want to read my essay, it is uploaded here for your reading pleasure – let me know what you think. 

Of the many implications of these big changes is that I leaned into freelance projects. There is a lot to say about all of these but my biggest takeaway personally has been the pleasure of getting to choose my collaborators again and working with really supportive, kind and creative people at a time of great transition has been a gift. You can read about those below.

Curatorial and Exhibition Projects 

• Eco-Social Salon – In early 2023 I launched the Eco-Social Salon, Site-Seeing, and Screening Series in collaboration with RAIR, Green Sun and Making Worlds. This series is ongoing with an event coming up in a few weeks and looking forward, I am developing an exhibition project for 2026 where the series can be transformed into an exhibit across multiple sites simultaneously to create a “bioregional” exhibition. 
• The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation’s Art Lounge exhibit – Last fall I curated the exhibition “We Are Nature: Selected Earthlings from the University of Pennsylvania Art Collection” for which a wide range of artworks from the collection were hung in an exhibition from October 2024 to February 2025 within the The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation’s Art Lounge at Penn Live Arts in the University of Pennsylvania. Working with this unusual collection and the team at Sachs, Penn’s Art Collection, Penn Live Arts was a real pleasure. In the end the exhibition of over 40 artworks was on view throughout dozens of events in the fall and winter, it opened with a talk by my longtime collaborator Rebecca Zorach, and I got to program an experimental interpretation workshop called Confabulation Lecture Night with the fantastic folks from the worker-run performance group Obvious Agency.
• Curating Engagement – Prior to UArts closure I had secured grant from Wagner Foundation to create a gathering of professionals who align with the framework of Curating Engagement (you can see the 2 part journal I edited for Common Ground Research Networks on the topic here and here for a better idea of the methods and contexts that this work touches on). I reapplied after the UArts closure through Public Trust and the grant was renewed with plans for the Curating Engagement Retreat to take place in June 2025. It is finally coming up and as part of this process I’ve been appointed as a curator in residence at Public Trust for the year. We’ll make a publication out of this gathering and I’ll share more on that once it is done.

• Future Perfect at 10 Years: In the Fall of 2024 (from September 2024 to February 2025) I presented my video Future Perfect: Time Capsules in Reagan Country as an installation in the galleries at Grand Central Art Center (Santa Ana, CA) at Cal State Fullerton alongside the contents of a opened time capsule that was made during the video’s original production a decade ago. Read about it in the LA Times here. 
• Strategic Universalism: My relatively artist book We Are All…Now (Set Margins, 2022) based on my drawing series “Strategic Universalism” was included in the exhibit Assembly curated by Ulises at Tufts University Gallery from Aug 13 – Nov 10, 2024. If you haven’t seen the book – buy one from Set Margins or get in touch with me and I can mail you one.
• Arts in Society conference– I’ve taken a parental leave from the Arts in Society conference for 2025 after having a really incredible convening with participants from over 30 countries last May 2024 with my collaborator Tammy Ko Robinson for the last Arts in Society conference in Seoul (with plenary speakers Solana Chehtman, Özge Ersoy, Yoo Yedong, Hee-young Kim, Sooyoun Lee). Next year I’ll be back when we go to Athens in June 2026 (with plenary speaker Georgia Kotretsos and more to be announced soon). Perhaps you’ll consider submitting something to present and joining us.

Writing/Editing Projects 

• KADIST – I’ve been working with Joseph Del Pesco of KADIST on the really fun project One Question Exhibition where artists and curators make an online exhibition out of a single question for which I’ll be serving as editor throughout 2025. The contributors include Ozge Ersoy, Jemma Desai, Denise Ryner, Marianna Dobkowska, David Ayala-Alfonso, Fereshteh Toosi, Nina Barnett, Amanda Gutierrez, Katarina Sevic, Hyejung Jang and more. Subscribe to get them in your inbox and read more here. 
• Public Art Dialogue: The journal Public Art Dialogue has just published a special issue on temporary and unrealized monuments which included a review I wrote last year called “Sandbags, Surveys and Sculptures: A Review of Two Recent Experiments in Temporary Public Art” that looks at Monument Lab’s work in DC and Counterpublic’s 3rd edition in St. Louis. Thanks to the issue editors Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie. 
• Pedagogical Art in Activist and Curatorial Practices – In this new book (to be released in late June) edited by Noni Brynjolson and Izabel Galliera which is about to be released in June 2025 as part of the series Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies, my 2016 essay “Communiversity: Inside and Outside Art Education” will be reprinted. Thanks to Rebecca Uchill and Niels Van Tomme for allowing for the reprint from the original context of a De Appel/UMBC Center for Art Design and Visual Culture catalog on the work of Muntadas.
• GRATE – As was mentioned above, this new print-only quarterly published an essay (uploaded here) that I wrote called Dislocated Art Worker about the closure of UArts for their first issue dedicated to the impact of UArts shuttering last year. Thanks to editor Julia Marsh for working with me on this challenging text and to my wife Emily Bunker for her feedback and permission to share the personal story of the closure that impacted us both.
• Farm Together Now: This year marks 15 years since the release of the Farm Together Now book and in commemoration I wrote this Blog post to reflect on the last decade and a half in food (and art!).
• Notes for a People’s Atlas – Tuomo Alhojärvi recently published this essay entitled “Blank utopias: inheriting the cartographic grid with a people’s atlas” about the project Note’s for a People’s Atlas that my AREA Chicago collaborators and I developed between 2006-2011. It is always rewarding to have your work written about, but in this instance it is even more so because it is a favorite project that connected me to so many people. Notes for a People’s Atlas started as a side project of the magazine AREA Chicago magazine and used initially as a tool for generating dialogues about social histories and idiosyncratic interpretations of the city, and then expanded to 20 other cities around the world.
• Beyond Glass Cases – I’m currently developing a major catalog essay and conducting interviews for a forthcoming book on the project “Beyond Glass Cases” produced by the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. I’ll share more later this year when it is done but for now big thanks to Bill Adair, Tania Isaac, and Sarah Weatherwax for bringing me on board.

Consulting, Speaking, Juries and Advising:

• Express Newark – Last year I was enlisted by Express Newark (a Rutgers University Newark project led by Salamisha Tillet and Dominic Klein) to evaluate and propose future plans for their “Free School” in Newark, New Jersey led by Anthony Alvarez. The process was so interesting and the folks at EN are doing incredible work which you can check out here.
• Penn State University – I’ve started authoring arts administration/integrative Arts courses for Penn State University’s College of Arts and Architecture starting with one that I’ll teach next fall on cultural events and project management. 
• Museum Studies Roundtable was a panel I moderated on October 9th, 2024 at the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums featuring the presenters Kathryn Blake, Martha Easton, Izabel Galliera,James Harper, Ellen Owens, and Cyril Reade who reflected on “Training the Next Generation of Museum Professionals.” 
• College Art Association – Last February I presented “Reflections on Teaching Social Engagement” which included a look back on a decade of my teaching practice across multiple institutions. The panel was called “Designated Assembly Points: Connecting the Dots in Art Administration” and was convened by National Council of Art Administrators and moderated by Elissa C. Armstrong. 
• Philadelphia Cultural Treasures – Last fall I served for the second time on the Nomination Committee for this fellowship for Philadelphia BIPOC artists. The awarded fellowships were announced in late 2024.
• Mural Arts Philadelphia – Last fall I was invited in as a respondent to a curatorial presentation series organized by Jameson Paige and starting this summer I’ll be convening a curatorial committee for the staff. More on that as it evolves.
• Art is PHL – For several years I’ve been on the board of the first percent for art program, the PHDC Public Art Committee (though have recently stepped down while I am on parental leave). One of the projects the committee developed prior to my time was the micro-granting program Art is Phl and since I came on board I’ve been part of an effort to envision a new direction for this program, hire consultants to evaluate the early iteration and alongside Germaine Ingram, Accra Zuberi, Margo Berg and Kacie Liss have worked to plan a future step for this program that is more focused on capacity building for emerging artists to start working in the public art realm.

Looking forward:

Builders, Shapers & Independents: Next academic year I’ll have two overlapping positions at University of Pennsylvania that will give me an anchor that I haven’t had for the last year while doing all the projects mentioned above. Earlier this month grants were announced from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation and I’m very honored and lucky to be among the incredible list of recipients. The project that I will be developing through a residency with University of Pennsylvania Press will assemble a number of group interview interviews with Philadelphia arts elders. The work will start next fall 2025, and we will continue in the spring of 2026 when I will be a faculty fellow with the Center for Experimental Ethnography – giving me the time to really dedicate to developing this work that will ultimately take the form of a book with Penn Press. I can’t wait to share more about this project in the future, and I am hopeful that it will serve to lift up the voices of many incredible Philadelphia artists and cultural workers, and that it will help to fill in some gaps around local art history. Many thanks to my collaborator on the residency application Walter Biggins from Penn press, to Deborah Thomas and Alissa Jordan at the Center for Experimental Ethnography and to the staff, funder and board of the Sachs Program for their support. Details on the project are here.

After that, I don’t know what I’ll get into – get in touch if you have ideas! And please keep in touch and share your updates with me as well.

In tandem,

Daniel