Arts and Culture in New York City

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

New York City has long occupied a central place in the global imagination as a hub of artistic and cultural production—home to iconic institutions, vibrant creative communities, and major annual events from Fashion Week to The Armory Show. Its centrality reflects not only cultural prestige but also distinctive spatial and social dynamics: philanthropic legacies that shaped museums, loft conversions and MFA programs that drew artists, and immigrant and working-class labor that continue to sustain the city’s cultural infrastructure. This panel examines both the historical foundations and the contemporary forces that define New York’s cultural life. We explore the institutions, practices, and work that keep the city’s art worlds alive, while also considering the exclusions and inequalities that persist. At the same time, we ask how New York’s status as a cultural center is being reshaped by global art markets, the growing recognition of historically marginalized artists, and the rise of digital platforms that are transforming how culture circulates and gains value. Together, the panel interrogates how New York’s art worlds and cultural fields are at once enduring, contested, and continually reinvented in the twenty-first century.

Sub Unit

• Regional Spotlight Session

Presider

• Hannah Wohl, University of California-Santa Barbara

Panelists

• Shamus Rahman Khan, Princeton University

• Claudio Ezequiel Benzecry, Northwestern University

• Tania R. Aparicio, Teachers College-Columbia University

• Ashley E. Mears, University of Amsterdam

Session Organizer

• Hannah Wohl, University of California-Santa Barbara