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The James Gallery The Amie and Tony James Gallery brings artists and scholars into public dialogue on topics of mutual

Plan your fall visit to ART/WORK: The Practice and Politics of CETA and the Arts, 1974–1981 at The James Gallery.This fa...
10/01/2026

Plan your fall visit to ART/WORK: The Practice and Politics of CETA and the Arts, 1974–1981 at The James Gallery.

This fall’s events include Second Saturday gallery hours, Open House New York Weekend, and two public programs exploring the history and legacy of CETA and the arts.

Second Saturdays
October 10, November 14 & December 12
12–6 PM
Curators Molly Garfinkel and Jodi Waynberg will be at the gallery to meet visitors.

Open House New York Weekend
Friday, October 16, 4–8 PM
Curator tours at 4:30, 5:30 & 6:30 PM.

Alex Strada and Emilio Martínez Poppe in Conversation
Tuesday, October 27, 6:30 PM
The James Gallery
RSVP information forthcoming.

Culture and Representation in America: The Impact of CETA
Wednesday, December 9, 6:30–7:45 PM
Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center
A panel discussion on CETA’s legacy with curators Molly Garfinkel and Jodi Waynberg, visual historian Drew Thompson, and others. Hybrid and open to the public; reservations required.

ART/WORK is on view through December 12, 2026. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday–Friday, 12–6 PM, plus Second Saturdays, 12–6 PM.

More exhibition information at jamesgallery.gc.cuny.edu.

Still buzzing from our opening on Wednesday celebrating ART/WORK: The Practice and Politics of CETA and the Arts, 1974-1...
09/18/2026

Still buzzing from our opening on Wednesday celebrating ART/WORK: The Practice and Politics of CETA and the Arts, 1974-1981, curated by Molly Garfinkel (Molly Garfinkel) and Jodi Waynberg (Jodi Waynberg). We were honored to welcome many CETA participants who made the evening especially memorable (see slide 8!). If you couldn’t join us this week, we hope to see you at the Graduate Center this fall. The show is up through December 12!

Join us on Wednesday, September 16, from 6-8 pm for the opening reception of ART/WORK: The Practice and Politics of CETA...
09/10/2026

Join us on Wednesday, September 16, from 6-8 pm for the opening reception of ART/WORK: The Practice and Politics of CETA and the Arts, 1974-1981.

Curated by Molly Garfinkel (Molly Garfinkel) and Jodi Waynberg (Jodi Waynberg), ART/WORK is the first major exhibition to examine the national impact of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), a federal jobs program that supported more than 30,000 artists and cultural workers across the United States during the 1970s.

Bringing together artworks, photographs, archival materials, and ephemera, the exhibition traces how CETA reshaped cultural infrastructure while advancing a radical proposition: that artistic labor can be understood as a public good.

Opening Reception
Wednesday, September 16, 6-8pm
The James Gallery
CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue

Image: Performance of Ellsworth Ausby’s InnerSpace/OuterSpace at Sweet 14 (Union Square). August 14, 1978. Photo: Blaise Tobia for the CCF Artists Project Documentation Unit.

The Inter-Asian Perspectives Work Group’s first graduate conference “When is Asia Modern? Negotiating Borders of Moderni...
04/27/2026

The Inter-Asian Perspectives Work Group’s first graduate conference “When is Asia Modern? Negotiating Borders of Modernisms” will be held at the James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center on May 1, 2026. Please RSVP via the link in our bio.

Asian modern art has long been framed through a Western art-historical chronology, locating its “beginning” in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century—precisely the moment of intensified encounters with the West and the imposition of Eurocentric models of modernity onto Asia. Recent scholarship across the humanities has begun to unsettle this timeline: some push the chronology backward to examine early articulations of Asian modernity in mercantile networks and imperial formations; others push it forward to engage shared global histories of the post, i.e., postcolonial, post-imperial, post-socialist.

To propose an alternative approach to thinking about Asia Modern, we ask: how do Asian modernisms emerge through the negotiation of borders? Here, borders may be understood as Cartographic Borders—those drawn and redrawn in nation-building, imperial expansion, or decolonization; Cultural Borders—those that define, delimit, or delegitimize certain formations of groups, ideas, practices, etc.; and/or Aesthetic Borders—the negotiations of style, medium, and form that highlight, contest, or blur distinctions and affinities within and across artistic traditions.

Rather than recasting the Euro-American centers as the primary axis through which these borders are negotiated, we invite papers that consider intra-Asian encounters as sites of emerging Asian modernisms. By examining how these different borders are made, crossed, and reconfigured, we collectively explore alternative imaginaries of the Asia Modern.

Short lunchtime tours led by GC doctoral studentsThursday, April 16th, 12 p.m.Kerry DoranPh.D. Program in Art History
04/14/2026

Short lunchtime tours led by GC doctoral students
Thursday, April 16th, 12 p.m.
Kerry Doran
Ph.D. Program in Art History

Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature and the Founding Director...
04/14/2026

Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature and the Founding Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Stony Brook University. He is the author of two books, Argentine Intimacies: Q***r Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (SUNY Press, 2019) and Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair (Duke University Press, 2025). He co-edited Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) as well as the 2021 special issue of Gay and Le***an Studies Quarterly, “Q***r/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable,” and has published work in Revista Hispánica Moderna, Critical Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review, and Art Journal, as well as in popular outlets such as Hyperallergic, TruthOut, and Indian Country Today. Along with S.J. Norman (Wiradjuri) he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds, and in 2024-2025 he was a Ford Foundation Scholar in Residence at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

Joseph will participate in the conversation Visual Sovereignty with Jolene Richard, Alan Michelson, and Wanda Nanibush for This Portrait is NOT an Indian Wed, Apr 15, 2026 4:00 PM-8:00 PM

Jolene Rickard is an Associate Professor at Cornell University in the departments of History of Art & Visual Studies, an...
04/13/2026

Jolene Rickard is an Associate Professor at Cornell University in the departments of History of Art & Visual Studies, and the former Director of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program 2008-2020 (AIISP). She is a visual historian, artist and curator interested in the intersection of Indigenous art, cultural theory and the forces of settler colonialism. Her research centers on the expression of multiple sovereignties within Indigenous art and culture globally.

Jolene Rickard has been at the forefront of comparative understandings of global Indigenous art with research projects in the Americas, Australia, and Aotearoa (New Zealand). Her work bridges the fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Settler Colonial Studies and the discipline of Art History. Focused on the complication of sovereignty as a political, theoretical and activist action, Rickard investigates anti-colonial artistic strategies, place-based knowledges and ontologies.

Jolene will participation in the conversation Visual Sovereignty with Alan Michelson, Joseph Pierce and Wanda Nanibush for This Portrait is NOT an Indian Wed, Apr 15, 2026 4:00 PM-8:00 PM at Proshansky Auditorium, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC.

New York- and Toronto-based Cree artist Kent Monkman sums up the history of performing ‘Indian’ in The Emergence of a Le...
04/08/2026

New York- and Toronto-based Cree artist Kent Monkman sums up the history of performing ‘Indian’ in The Emergence of a Legend (2006). In a series of five studio portraits emulating daguerrotypes, Monkman poses as his persona/alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, adapting a variety of guises based on real and imagined personages—from Catlin’s gallery to vaudeville, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show to Hollywood. Monkman simultaneously makes this history visible and qu**rs it by applying a two-spirit lens that undermines colonialism’s imposition of gender normativity. —Wanda Nanibush

Kent will be participating in This Portrait is NOT an Indian Wed, Apr 15, 2026 4:00 PM-8:00 PM

Mohawk artist Alan Michelson uses rare footage from this parade as the basis for Pehin Hanska Ktepi (they killed long ha...
04/07/2026

Mohawk artist Alan Michelson uses rare footage from this parade as the basis for Pehin Hanska Ktepi (they killed long hair) (2021). The artist duplicates and loops the film to play counterclockwise (the Mohawk ceremonial direction), and projects it onto a red blanket in reference to the Lakota winter count.7 The title of Michelson’s work is taken from the winter count entry for 1876 and names some of the warriors present: Lone Wolf, White Horse, Black Whetstone, Limpy, Pine, Hollow Wood, Sun Bear, Kills Night, Fast Walker, Dog Friend, Beaver Heart, Shoots Walking, Young Hawk, and Little Moon. Crow scout White Man Runs Him was present, representing the seventh calvary. Michelson takes an event that often celebrates Custer as a martyr and centers the First Nations point of view of westward expansion as land theft and attempted cultural eradication. —Wanda Nanibush

Alan will be participating in This Portrait is NOT an Indian Wed, Apr 15, 2026 4:00 PM-8:00 PM

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365 5th Avenue
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10016

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Tuesday 12pm - 8pm
Wednesday 12pm - 8pm
Thursday 12pm - 8pm
Friday 12pm - 6pm
Saturday 12pm - 6pm
Sunday 12pm - 6pm

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