Please join Gertie and Independent Curators International (ICI) for a pair of panel discussions that explore ICI’s ongoing, cross-programming initiative known as the Mississippi River Project. ICI alumni and former Curatorial Research Fellows will present their perspectives on the origins and purpose of the Project, its organizing questions and structure, and the outcomes that have already started to emerge from this multi-year initiative.

Launched in 2021, the Project uses the Mississippi River—its immense basin, delta and outflow, and the Gulf of Mexico—as a lens and metaphor through which to generate new approaches to U.S. history, civic life, and art communities. The project’s programs, exhibition-making, fellowships, and collective curatorial research platforms align along a common goal: to convene curators, artists, and art spaces in order to collectively re-imagine the United States’s identity. It aims to transcend rigid political, social, and economic definitions of the U.S. through a focus on the river, the lands it connects, the histories it weaves together, and the cultural flows it has enabled.

Panel 1: 1–2:30pm
Brandon Alvendia (independent curator) and Risa Puleo (independent curator), moderated by Renaud Proch (Executive and Artistic Director, ICI)

Short break: 2:30–2:45pm

Panel 2: 2:45–4pm
Denny Mwaura (Assistant Director & Curator, Gallery 400) and Pia Singh (independent curator), moderated by Scott Vincent Campbell (Midwest Programs Manager, ICI)