Hosting Art

“Hosting Art with Diana Boros” is an original online video series created and hosted by Diana Boros, which is supported by a joint venture of the Guestbook Project and the Psychological Humanities & Ethics Center at Boston College.

“Hosting Art” employs the medium of dialogue to bring together the greatest minds making, promoting, theorizing about, and educating about, public and social practice art today.

Specifically, the series focuses on discussions about the transformative capacities of art- the ability of art to encourage critique and introspection- and accordingly, the value of art in society, and in democracy. It explores how artistic communication and collaboration can create and deepen ties between people and within communities, and how socially engaged, or social practice, projects can serve as vehicles for “hosting” interactions, dialogues, and relationships.

This project aims to become a resource for all those interested in these ideas by creating a collection of conversations that each tackle different dimensions of the complex relationship between art and political life.

Instagram: @hosting.art

About Diana Boros

Diana Boros is Department Chair and Associate Professor of Political Theory at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a public liberal arts institution and the national public honors college. Previously, she worked for the United States Senate, as well as for several senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns, and was also teaching professor of political science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Besides creating and hosting “Hosting Art”, she is also co-founder and faculty advisor of the SMCM Public Art Collective. She has published two books: Creative Rebellion for the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Public and Interactive Art to Political Life in America, and Re-Imagining Public Space: The Frankfurt School in the 21st Century, and is currently at work on a third, tentatively titled Social Engagement in Art: Lessons of Collaboration for Political Life. She makes art whenever she can. 

Episodes

Episode 1 with Matthew Clemente:

Matthew is Codirector of the Guestbook Project and a fellow with both the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College and the Cura Psychologia Project.

Episode 2 with Mark Cooper:

Mark is an internationally recognized artist who is well known for his large-scale public and collaborative projects, such as his "Stop the Violence" project in which he worked with thousands of at-risk youths to produce public artworks all around DC and NYC.

Episode 3 with Tom Finkelpearl:

Tom is a well-known voice in the field of social practice art. He is an author, curator, current professor of social practice art at CUNY, and the former Commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs as well as former director of the Queens Museum.

Episode 4 with Ed Woodham:

Ed is a public and social practice artist who is also a curator and professor of art. He has given TED talks and is the founder/director of the long-running and popular Art in Odd Places project.

Episode 5 with Grant Kester:

Grant is a world-renowned voice in social practice art theory. He is professor of art history and the author of several books on the topic, as well as the founder and editor of the FIELD journal of socially engaged art criticism.

Upcoming Episodes

Episode 6 with Michael Feola:

Michael is a political philosopher who focuses on the links between politics and aesthetics. He is author of The Powers of Sensibility: Aesthetic Politics through Adorno, Foucault, and Rancière.

Episode 7 with Hattie Myers:

Hattie is founder and editor of the community-driven and multidisciplinary literary and arts journal, ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action and is a psychoanalyst with the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.