View all films

Relevance of Place: Heather Hart

Shannon Jackson interviews interdisciplinary public artist Heather Hart about the artistic and social goals of her public art practice as well as their relevance for the history and future of Tippet Rise Art Center. In this episode, Hart describes the family histories and political histories that have shaped her art-making and the multidisciplinary collaborations of her site-specific work. Watch to hear her discuss issues of community, race, and form in contemporary art as well as the complicated legacies that inform her approach to public art.

Heather Hart

Artist Heather Hart looks to the left of the camera.

Heather Hart, based in Brooklyn, is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the power in thresholds, questioning dominant narratives, and creating alternatives to them. She was awarded grants from Anonymous Was A Woman, the Graham Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation, NYFA, and Harpo Foundation. Hart co-founded Black Lunch Table and has won a Creative Capital award, Wikimedia Foundation grants, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and an Andy Warhol Foundation of Art grant with that project. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Storm King Art Center, The Kohler Art Center, NCMA, Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and University of Toronto among others. She is an Assistant Professor at Mason Gross School for Art + Design, a member of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums, an external advisor for AUC Art Collective, and a trustee at Storm King Art Center. Hart was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, studied at Skowhegan, Whitney ISP, Cornish College of the Arts, Princeton University and received her MFA from Rutgers University.

Shannon Jackson

Shannon Jackson holds the Hadidi Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she currently serves as Chair of the History of Art Department. Jackson is a scholar and educator of cross-media art practice and of socially-engaged art. A Guggenheim fellow and award-winning author, she has published several books and online platforms, including Back Stages (2022), Public Servants (2016), The Builders Association (2015), Social Works (2011) as well as In Terms of Performance and Media Art 21. Jackson serves on the boards of several arts organizations, including Oakland Museum of the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Minnesota Street Project Foundation, and the Kramlich Art Foundation. As a guest program advisor to Tippet Rise, Jackson helped to create the Relevance of Place series of site-specific dialogues.

Related Films