Reimagining the Gallery as an Inclusive Site of Participatory Arts-Based Research

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 11:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Spaces with/in arts based educational research

Abstract

Galleries in higher education institutions can foster inquiry or, conversely, reinforce exclusion. The Empathy Box Gallery (pseudonym) established in 2022 and located in a school of education, seeks to navigate this tension by taking up the principles of arts-based research within curatorial practice. Breaking from traditional “white-cube” models, the EB gallery offers interactive experiences that aim to create a more inclusive academic space. Through experimental exhibits, the gallery facilitates collaboration and multimodal dialogue, challenging conventional notions of how, where, and who is in conversation. This process-based case study examines how the EB Gallery develops the possibilities for arts-based scholarship by treating exhibition itself as a curatorial research method, one that activates relational inquiry in public academic spaces.

Authors

• Lucius Von Joo, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Chris Moffett, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Blake Danzig, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Emmy Semprun, Teachers College, Columbia University