Many societies, including the United States, are experiencing a period of significant polarization and a loss of faith in institutions. So, it might be surprising to learn the American public still places a lot of trust in museums, according to research. This is true across partisan lines. What is it that makes museums relevant and why are people drawn to them?

Co-hosts Jennifer Saracino and Sama Alshaibi speak with curator Rukejo Hockley of the Whitney Museum of American Art to find out more about what happens inside art museums. They delve into Rujeko’s journey of becoming a curator, working with contemporary artists, and co-curating the 2019 Whitney Biennial and earlier projects at the Brooklyn Museum. In this episode, we learn:

• Why art museums are as much about the future as they are about the past,
• What relationship and responsibility curators have to communities reflected within the exhibitions they shape, and
• How controversy can lead to personal and professional growth.

Rujeko Hockley is the Arnhold Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Previously, she was Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum and Curatorial Assistant at The Studio Museum in Harlem. She works with artists and artworks that are breaking new ground, including such projects as the Amy Sherald: American Sublime (2025), We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 (2017), and many other notable exhibitions. She serves on the boards of directors for Art Matters, Institute for Freedoms, and Museums Moving Forward, and the advisory board of Recess.

The need for civic dialogue has never been as important as it is today. In the US and around the world, communities are facing complex problems. Finding solutions is contentious. How can art help bring people together across lines of difference to talk, listen, and understand the myriad forces shaping civic life? We bring you a conversation with Hank Willis Thomas, a boundary-spanning artist whose work grapples with hard truths. Our co-hosts are professors Sama Alshaibi and Jennifer Saracino. They speak with Hank about his exhibition, LOVERULES. The show has over 90 of his works, including photography, sculpture, installation, and printmaking, representing two decades of a socially-engaged art practice that invites audiences to look more carefully and act more collectively. In this episode, we learn why Hank believes all art is political; how he infuses a collaborative ethos to create opportunities for civic dialogue; and how to tap into the radical power of love to heal individuals and communities on the brink of crisis.

A recipient of numerous honors, including the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019) and The Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), Hank Willis Thomas is influenced by social history and an unflinching concern for equality in all aspects of his creative practice. He co-founded For Freedoms an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. His artwork has been shown internationally and is collected by major museums across the nation. The exhibition LOVERULES can be viewed through June 21, 2025, at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, in partnership with the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.

Have you ever wondered how art becomes activism? We bring you a conversation with curator and writer Elizabeth Ferrer, who takes us from the Chicano murals of her east Los Angeles childhood to groundbreaking exhibitions on Latinx photography. Guest hosts Gia Del Pino and Lizzy Guevara speak with Elizabeth about her retrospective on Louis Carlos Bernal, a trailblazing Chicano photographer who centered Mexican-American lives and traditions. Through striking, deeply human portraits, Bernal’s images challenge stereotypes and expand the canon of American photography. In this episode, learn about how photographs do more than reflect the culture as it is; how self-representation can dignify and transform how we see ourselves and our communities; and how images can transport the spirit of an individual subject into a cultural movement.

Elizabeth Ferrer recently curated the exhibition Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva, a landmark survey of one of the most significant American photographers of the twentieth century, which is on view through March 15, 2025 at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. The exhibition is accompanied by a book authored by Ferrer and co-published with Aperture, Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía.