AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

Call for Applications: Art in the Public Sphere/MPAS Graduate Program

Priority deadline for the 2009–2010 academic year: March 2, 2009

Applications may be submitted after this date on a space available basis.

For more information on the Public Art Studies program at USC, please contact us at
pasprog@usc.edu or visit our website at http://roski.usc.edu/pas

Master of Public Art Studies Program: Art in the Public Sphere
Director: Joshua Decter
University of Southern California
Roski School of Fine Arts

Watt Hall 104 University Park Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0292
Telephone: 213 743 8540 | Fax: 213 743 4563

Ruth Weisberg, Dean

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Under the new leadership of curator, critic, and art historian Joshua Decter, in conjunction
with a faculty of curators, scholars, and organizers, the Master of Public Art Studies: Art in
the Public Sphere graduate program at the University of Southern California Roski School
of Fine Arts functions as a hub for critically rethinking the role of art in the public sphere
and analyzing art's complex engagements with social space. Students in the program
focus upon many theoretical and practical problems facing artists, curators, critics,
theorists, architects, and other cultural producers, in order to:

¶ re-imagine the public sphere in terms of the challenges of city-space and the urban
condition;

¶ evaluate processes of social collaboration, networks of participation, and relational
aesthetics;

¶ identify strategies of location-driven, site-specific, and situational engagement;

¶ debate concepts and realities of community-based practice;

¶ interrogate the role of the curator—and curatorial practice—in city-based exhibition
projects; and

¶ situate public art vis-à-vis broader art histories.

The two-year Master of Public Art Studies: Art in the Public Sphere graduate program
welcomes students from a range of academic backgrounds and professional interests, and
offers a unique context for the study of key historical notions of public space and the
public sphere, and the influence of these ideas upon the work of contemporary artists,
theorists, and architects who seek to reconsider the public realm as a space of possibility.
Immersed in a cross-disciplinary curriculum comprised of seminars, directed research,
practicum opportunities, and guest lectures, students have the opportunity to participate
in the development of a hybrid cultural discourse—and adventurous modes of curatorial
organizing—that draws from aspects of art history and criticism, exhibition history, urban
theory, architectural history and theory, social science, geography, and urban planning.
The graduate program examines how public and private space is fundamentally
interconnected on conceptual and experiential levels, and how the most compelling art
projects and exhibition initiatives seek to critically and dynamically re-script lived
environments within city-spaces, challenging our assumptions about control, openness,
access, and social interaction. As an example of a new curatorial practicum framework,
students recently collaborated with the Tijuana/Los Angeles-based art collective, Bulbo,
to reactivate a 1970 Allan Kaprow Happening in various public spaces around Los Angeles,
in conjunction with the "Allan Kaprow—Art as Life" exhibition at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
The graduate program prepares students for careers in curatorial practice, the
administration/organization of art projects in the public sphere, art writing, as well as
opportunities within academia; and encourages them to imagine—as agents of change—
new forms of cultural-political citizenship in relation to the renewed democratic potential
of the public sphere. Fellowships and scholarships are available on a competitive basis.

Joshua Decter, Director of the Public Art Studies: Art in the Public Sphere graduate
program and Assistant Professor. A critic, curator, and art historian, Decter is a contributor
to Artforum, Afterall, and other periodicals, and has organized exhibitions at PS1 in New
York, The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, The Museum of Contemporary Art in
Chicago, Apex Art in New York, The Kunsthalle Vienna, and the Santa Monica Museum of
Art, among other institutions. Decter was a curatorial interlocutor for the inSite_05 San
Diego/Tijuana "Interventions" exhibition, and organized the conference, "The Situational
Drive: Complexities of Public Sphere Engagement," in collaboration with inSite San
Diego/Tijuana and Creative Time, New York, presented at The Cooper Union, NY, in 2007.
He most recently served on the graduate faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard
College. Decter has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and books, including
publications for
the 28th Bienal of São Paulo, Brazil (2008), and the 2008 California Biennial.

Full-time Faculty: Rhea Anastas, Visiting Assistant Professor, USC Master of Public
Art Studies Program. From 2001–2008 she was Visiting Assistant Professor, The Center for
Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture, Bard College. Anastas co-edited Dan
Graham: Works 1965–2000 (2001) and Witness to Her Art: Art and Writings by Adrian
Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and Eau de
Cologne (2006), and was a co-founder of Orchard Gallery, New York.

Adjunct Faculty: Lauri Firstenberg: Director/Curator, LAXART ; Carol Stakenas: Executive
Director, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE ); Edgar Arceneaux (artist); Anne
Bray: Curator, Executive Director, LA Freewaves; Rita Gonzalez: Assistant Curator, LACMA;
Karen Moss: Curator, Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs, Orange County
Museum of Art; Donna Conwell: Curator-Producer, Writer, Art Historian; Janet Owen
Driggs: Writer, Artist, Curator; Christina Ulke: Artist, Co-Editor/Co-Publisher, Journal of
Aesthetics and Protest; Susan Gray: Cultural Arts Planner, CRA/LA

Guest speakers for 2007–2009 include: Edgar Arceneaux, Anne Pasternak, Bulbo, Sam
Durant, Mark Dion, Marjetica Potrc, Andrea Fraser, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rick Lowe, Ute
Meta Bauer, Rochelle Steiner, Patricia Phillips, Allan McCollum, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Norman
Klein, Gregory Sholette, Teddy Cruz, Miwon Kwon, Nato Thompson, Hou Hanru, Steve
Dietz, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Doug Aitken, Grant Kester, Peter Zellner, Michael Krichman,
Tirdad Zolghadr.

from LA Culture Net