Author: Jim Duignan

DePaul Art Museum, in partnership with Jim Duignan and Stockyard Institute, aims to pilot a radical and groundbreaking approach to engagement, learning, and experimentation within our galleries, collection, and beyond. This unique art education model champions intergenerational exchange and experimentation through the mutual sharing of ideas and resources amongst artists and teachers, and a fundamental shift in educational hierarchy, production, and benchmarking. Focusing on families in communities that have historically had little to no access to museum programs and no agency in helping to determine their subject matter or true purpose, this programming will use the Stockyard Institute as a model for radically changing the ways that we conceptualize teaching in museum spaces in order to more authentically and meaningfully engage with and learn from our publics and communities. DPAM’s current exhibition, which runs through February 13, 2022, is intended to set the conditions and develop key guidelines for the museum in order to launch an innovative, inclusive, and timely model of civic museum education in Spring 2022. By providing educational workshops and opportunities for teachers, students in the College of Education and Liberal Arts departments at DePaul University and beyond, DPAM and Stockyard Institute will build a network of families, artists, and educators who, with the museum, will learn how to build a more loving, engaged, and caring city through art.

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Stockyard Institute , an ongoing civic and artistic practice founded in 1995 by artist Jim Duignan in the Back of the Yards community of south Chicago, was influenced by community artists, revolutionaries, youth, activists, and radical teachers. Together, they instrumentalized the arts in Chicago neighborhoods to reimagine social, civic, and personal forms of public engagement. This retrospective brings together for the first time archival material, objects, installations and a radio station that exemplify a subversive art practice on the margins rooted in love, relationships, collaboration, and self-determination.

The first museum publication on Stockyard Institute will accompany the exhibition. Distributed by University of Chicago Press, the exhibition catalogue will feature contributions and essays from Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Director of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive ; Rachel L. S. Harper, Ph.D. and  Professional Lecturer for DePaul’s Department of Teacher Education; Allison Peters Quinn, Hyde Park Art Center Director of Exhibitions and Residency; Jorge Lucero, artist and Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Jennifer Gray, Curator of Drawings and Archives at Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University; and Nato Thompson, founder of The Alternative Art School.

Alphonsus Academy Center for the Arts ground breaking. A project organized and led by Becky Manual, Director of Arts integration at AA/CA with artist Jim Duignan building seating and architectural elements for the outdoor learning habitat.