Critical Commons

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Southwest Contemporary join forces for an evening of dialogue, dinner, and existential pondering in celebration of the launch of Southwest Contemporary‘s latest print issue—themed Collectivity + Collaboration—and UMOCA’s exhibition Our Wake Up Call For Freedoms. We’ll contemplate art and cultural criticism, collective practice, and how these subjects converge.

We’ll kick off the evening with a short talk by Natalie Hegert, arts editor at Southwest Contemporary and critic-in-residence at UMOCA, and a panel discussion with Natalie, Laura Hurtado (executive director, UMOCA), Lauren Tresp, (publisher, Southwest Contemporary), Jared Steffenson (curator of exhibitions, UMOCA), and Darren Jones (art critic, editor, and educator). All participants will then be invited to join a casual community dinner followed by a series of fun, fast-paced roundtable discussions on these interrelated topics. Each panelist will lead a small discussion group where you’ll be invited to ask questions like, “how can collaborative practice in the arts lead to positive social change?” and, “what the heck is Southwest Contemporary?”

Critical Commons is free with registration and is limited to 75 participants.

Friday, February 25 

Doors open at 5 / Program begins at 5:30