Qt(A)M Panel Line Up Finalized

the Qt(A)M Symposium has finalized the Saturday panelists. This is a the last link to cement the program and oh am I happy to have this set in stone.

The speakers are as follows:

Kris Morrissey - Director of the Museology Program at the University of Washington. Prior to her appointment as Director in September of 2007, Kris Morrissey was the Curator of Interpretation at the Michigan State University Museum and Director of the MSU Museum Studies Program. She is the editor of the journal Museums & Social Issues published by Left Coast Press, Inc. She has over 20 years experience working in museums and has taught university courses on a range of subjects, including informal learning, interpretation, new technologies, research and evaluation. She is interested in the ways museums engage, educate and listen to individuals, families, communities and society. Morrissey is also a PI for New Directions Research, Service and Academics in Visitor Studies, a project that will prepare a new generation of evaluators and museum practitioners through an innovative apprentice-styled laboratory that integrates the strengths of mentoring, fieldwork, academics and client-centered experiences. Led by the University of Washington's Museology Program and joined by partners the Woodland Park Zoo and the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Center (LIFE), New Directions will develop a model of university and community collaboration. Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services 21st Century Museum Professionals Program.

Rahul Gariola - received a joint PhD in English Literature and Theory & Criticism from the University of Washington (UW) in December 2009. He has completed doctoral research on fellowships and grants at Cambridge University (Pembroke College and CRASSH), Humboldt University of Berlin, Cornell University (School of Criticism & Theory), and The Simpson Center for the Humanities.  He views teaching as a form of classroom activism and contribution back to the community, and strives for harmony between learning inside of the institution with living outside of it.  He also views publishing as a necessary mode of “outreach activism” that empowers the dialogues forged inside the classroom with a global reach, and regularly engages in community outreach, volunteer work, conference and professional gatherings, and peer reviewing for academic journals. Rahul has published widely in the fields of postcolonial studies, cultural studies, gender/sexuality studies, and non-western and American literary studies, and has also been a prolific journalist and cultural critic for Popmatters.com. He is also connected throughout the Seattle arts & entertainment community, and has sat on Advisory Boards for Tasveer, Trikone, Seattle Art Museum, CHID, and the Northwest Film Forum.  

Wynne Greenwood -  a queer feminist artist working with video, performance, music, object, role and relationship. Her work has been included in performances and exhibitions at independent and institutional spaces internationally, including the Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial, the Frye Art Museum, The Kitchen and On the Boards. Greenwood currently teaches performance and video at Seattle University and through workshops and after-school programs. 

Jonathan D. Katz  - Director o SUNY Visual Studies program, co - curator of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American portraiture and Art, AIDS, America. His works looks at the intersection of art history and queer history, one of the busiest intersections in American culture, and yet one of the least studied. A specialist in the arts of the Cold War era, he is centrally concerned with the question of why the American avant-garde came to be dominated and defined by queer artists during what was perhaps the single most homophobic decade in this nation's history. The four essay reproduced here all attempt to read the work of some of these central Cold War artists like John Cage, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg in terms of resistance to dominant culture. But theirs' was a queer kind of resistance, almost illegible as dissident, for it employed strategies like silence, chance, emptiness and coding to mark its distance from the dominant social historical climes. Paradoxically, these quiet, closeted forms of resistance soon came to define the American avant-garde across the board.

Jen Graves -  has made her living writing about art and culture for 14 years. Before that she studied English at Stanford University. She's currently art critic at The Stranger, and writes for magazines including Art in America. She has taught art history at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and is a Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Grant recipient.


Our performance Artist:

ilvs strauss -  is a queer, mixed race: writer, performer, mixed media artist, and lighting designer based in Seattle. As a solo performance artist, she reinvents for herself and for others the artistry of storytelling via Slide Shows, narrating stories to images with all the candor and sincerity and humor that is inherent in the personal, anonymous photographs. Her work has been shown at On the Boards, Northwest Film Forum, Century Ballroom, Seattle Repertory's Leo K Theater, and Bumbershoot Music Festival. As a Lighting Designer and Technical Director, she has worked for Salt Horse, the Cherdonna and Lou Show, the Pat Graney Company, and LINGO dance theater. She also has had the distinct honor of portraying Jesus Christ in 'Homo for the Holidays' for two years running.


Phew that is a line up! Wait until you see what is in store for the opening of Hide//Seek//Difference//Desire//Northwest.