Alternatives in a Time of Institutional Crisis

Alternatives in a Time of Institutional Crisis turns to the growing field of independent and artist-led schools. Many of these spaces arise from necessity. They respond to the limits of traditional institutions by creating new forms of pedagogy grounded in cooperation, community, and imagination. These schools and collectives do not wait for the university to change. They build their own structures: small-scale, flexible, experimental, and often rooted in the lived experiences of artists and organizers from marginalized communities.

The panel includes artist, architect, and founder of La Escuela, Miguel Braceli, artist, educator, activist, and writer, Dr. Gregory Scholette, educator and organizer, Caroline Woolard, and moderator co-curator of Future Schools, Nato Thompson. Each are practitioners who create learning environments outside the academy. They approach education as a social process, a political project, and a shared act of world-building. The conversation will explore what artists and architects are creating on their own terms, how these experiments support working artists, and what insights they offer for the broader landscape of cultural education today.

will host a two-part gathering that examines how artists and architects learn today. The first panel looks directly at the conditions shaping higher education and the mounting pressures placed on art and architecture schools. The second panel turns toward the vibrant ecosystem of alternative art and architecture schools that have emerged in response. Together they create a space for reflection, critique, and imagination, bringing institutional leaders, cultural workers, and artist-organizers into the same conversation.

RESERVATIONS: Admission is free but reservations are required.

ACCESSIBILITY: This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. To request free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service, email your request at least three weeks in advance of the event to [email protected].

About the Speakers

Miguel Braceli is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of art, architecture, and social practice. His participatory public projects address geopolitical and local conflicts across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

He has presented work with MoMA PS1, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Hemispheric Institute/MUAC-UNAM, Matadero Madrid, Museo Moderno de Buenos Aires, Athr Foundation, Untitled Art Fair, and Pace Gallery, and has been featured in e-flux Criticism, Forbes, and Art Review.

Braceli’s residencies and fellowships include MacDowell (2023), Fountainhead (2023), Skowhegan (2022), Art Omi (2021), McColl (2020), AIM Bronx Museum (2022), and Fine Arts Work Center (2024). Awards include a Fulbright (2019–20), the Principality of Asturias Young Artist Award (2018), and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2024–26). In 2021 he co-founded LA ESCUELA___ with the international foundation Siemens Stiftung, and in 2022 was commissioned by New York’s Percent for Art for a permanent public work to be unveiled in the summer of 2026.

Dr. Gregory Sholette is a NYC-based artist, educator, activist, and writer. He is co-founder and co-director of Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY), an educational network that amplifies the collective power of socially engaged artists, scholars, and advocates throughout the City University of New York. Sholette also co-founded the influential art collectives: PAD/D, REPOhistory, and Gulf Labor Coalition. He is curator of Imaginary Archive, documenting a past whose future never arrived, and author of Dark Matter (2021). His latest book, The Radical Unpresent: Cultural Resistance in a Fractured World, is forthcoming from MIT Press in 2026.

Nato Thompson is a curator, writer, and cultural organizer whose work explores how art intersects with politics, education, and everyday life. He is the founder of The Alternative Art School, a global membership based platform supporting working artists through collective learning, critique, and shared resources. He also leads Dreaming in Public, a consultancy that supports artists, institutions, and cultural projects navigating questions of ethics, power, and sustainability.

His writing has appeared in publications such as Artforum, Frieze, and e flux, and he is the author of several books including Seeing Power and Culture as Weapon.

He is currently completing a new book, Making a Life of Art.

Caroline Woolard is a founding co-organizer of Art.coop and Head of Strategy at Pollinator.coop. She is the Area Head of Foundations in the Department of Art and Design at Montclair State University and the co-author of two major reports: (Grantmakers in the Arts, 2021) and (Center for Cultural Innovation, 2022) and three books: Making and Being (Pioneer Works, 2019), a book for educators about interdisciplinary collaboration, co-authored with Susan Jahoda; Art, Engagement, Economy (onomatopee, 2020) a book about managing socially-engaged and public art projects; and TRADE SCHOOL: 2009-2019, a book about peer learning that Woolard catalyzed in thirty cities internationally over a decade. Woolard’s artwork has been featured twice on New York Close Up (2014, 2016), a digital film series produced by Art21 and broadcast on PBS. carolinewoolard.com

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