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In socially engaged practices, the artwork is often art work—from running public consultation sessions, to coordinating resource sharing, sending emails, and mediating miscommunications. These labor activities often create space for artists and institutions to work together to structure new types of ethical and caring relationships with, and in-support of, their public(s). However, traditional object-oriented, display modalities of museums which encourage the dissemination of the products or end-results of a project can displace the labor of socially engaged artworks, thus concealing the relational work of the work.

This session will unpack some emergent and tested methods and models for structuring collaborative processes between artists and organizations in ways that support meaningful public engagement. It will also present perspectives on the multifaceted emotional labor required by artists and institutions when they collaborate on socially engaged art and the corresponding logistical labor and resource requirements that unfold from those needs. For example, when a socially engaged art work seeks to engage a specific audience how do artists and institutions begin to build these relationships so that they might work together on a project? Who is tasked with listening? What form does this listening take? How are systemic barriers within museums contended with? How, or can, institutional resources be leveraged to support community building? And, how does all of this affective labor, and the other emotional components of the work become incorporated into the exhibition format, or otherwise disseminated as a meaningful part of the project?