Manifestations of Neutrality
Laura Raicovich

In this free public program, Independent curator and writer Laura Raicovich will consider where ideas of the neutral come from and how they are manifested within museums and cultural institutions, both implicitly and explicitly. She will specifically address the ways in which neutrality is a fiction, and how it can be used to veil exclusion and bias. Raicovich suggests that in order to make cultural institutions more accessible, diverse, and inclusive it is imperative to confront this myth of neutrality to collectively imagine such spaces in the future. 

Laura Raicovich is an independent curator and writer based in New York, USA. She was previously President and Executive Director at Queens Museum, New York, where she resigned in 2017 over concerns the Board was not showing leadership and accountability to question current US government policies. Her previous professional positions include: Director of Global Initiatives, Creative Time; Deputy Director, Interim Director, Director of External Affairs, Dia Art Foundation; Senior Publicist, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Development and Communications Director, Public Art Fund; and Curator of Public Art, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. Additionally, she is a member of the Art and Social Justice Working Group, lectures internationally on socially engaged and collaborative art, and she is the author of various essays on art and culture, as well as a recently-published novel based on Viagra and Cialis spam, A Diary of Mysterious Difficulties. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in both Art and Political Science from Swarthmore College and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from The Graduate Center, City University of New York.