Sam Gilliam Lecture Series: Coco Fusco

Name: Sam Gilliam Lecture Series: Coco Fusco
Start: 2026-06-08T18:30:00-04:00
End: 2026-06-08T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center

Schedule

Mon Jun 08 2026 at 06:30 pm to 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center | Washington, DC

This lecture series welcomes prominent artists and thinkers to reflect on the intersections between art, academia, and public policy.
About this Event

Join the Hopkins Bloomberg Center for the third installment of the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series featuring Coco Fusco, a Cuban American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and professor whose work spans performance, video, and criticism. For over two decades, Fusco has examined the politics of colonialism, migration, race, gender, and power through performances and videos presented at major institutions including three Whitney Biennials, the Venice Biennale, and museums worldwide.
The program will begin with a screening of Fusco's 25-minute video To Live in June with your Tongue Hanging Out, which explores the work of Cuban revolutionary Reinaldo Arenas, followed by a fireside chat with Dora Malech, Elliott Coleman Professor and chair of the Writing Seminars, editor in chief of The Hopkins Review, and Senior Advisor to the Provost for the Arts at Johns Hopkins University, where she leads the new Office of the Arts.
Fusco will explore her practice of bridging art, activism, and anthropology to challenge traditional power structures.
Event Photos

WHEN: Monday, June 8, at 6:30 p.m.

5:30 p.m. — Event Check-in Begins

6:30 p.m. — Program Begins

7:30 p.m. — Registration Closes

8:00 p.m. — Reception Begins

9:00 p.m. — Reception Ends

WHERE: Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center

555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001

CHECK IN:

• A photo ID is required for entry.
• Each attendee must have a ticket registered in their own name. If you reserved a ticket for someone else, please ensure their name and information are correctly entered.
• A printed ticket is not needed.
• Theater seating is first-come, first-served. Guests are encouraged to arrive early; overflow seating may be available.

ABOUT COCO FUSCO

Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and a Professor of Art at Cooper Union. Fusco is a recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a United States Artists fellowship, a Fulbright fellowship and a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Fusco's performances and videos have been presented in the 56th Venice Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008 and 1993), and several other international exhibitions. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Walker Art Center, the Centre Pompidou, the Imperial War Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. She is represented by Mendes Wood DM.

Fusco is the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015), English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (1995), The Bodies That Were Not Ours (2001) and A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (2008).Tomorrow I Will Become an Island, a solo retrospective of Fusco’s works was presented at Berlin’s KW Institute of Contemporary Art in 2023, accompanied by a monograph published by Thames & Hudson. An additional survey of her work toured to MACBA in Barcelona and El Museo del Barrio in New York in 2025, and will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art of Tucson in the fall of 2026.

ABOUT THE SAM GILLIAM LECTURE SERIES

In recognition of the mission of the Hopkins Bloomberg Center—to connect research and discovery with policymaking— will provide a platform for speakers to engage in conversation with faculty experts, students, and the community about the role of art in addressing critical social issues.

Made possible by the Sam Gilliam Foundation, series was established to honor the artistic legacy and social justice commitments of the late Washington, D.C.-based artist Sam Gilliam. The series will welcome prominent artists and thinkers to the university’s Washington, D.C. hub to reflect on the intersections between contemporary art, academia, and public policy, and the role art plays in advancing society.