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Mon, Mar 08, 2021
"How Do We Get Well: On Public Health and Safety" to highlight the relationship between the arts and pressing issues in the public sector
On Monday, April 12 at 7 PM, the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University will present a free livestream of the 2021 Director’s Dialogue for Arts and Social Change at wexarts.org. An annual program that advances the arts as a catalyst for meaningful discussions of contemporary issues, the Director’s Dialogue this year looks at the inextricable ties between public health and public safety from the angle of culture.
An exceptional panel of professionals from the arts, academic, and public health sectors will take part in the conversation: Autumn Glover, the president of Partners Achieving Community Transformation (PACT) and senior director of community and civic engagement for Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center, who will serve as moderator; Ohio-based artist and filmmaker Cameron A. Granger, whose recent work includes a Wex-supported project addressing food insecurity in Columbus; Brooklyn-based artist Baseera Khan, a contributor to the current Wex exhibition Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment, whose pandemic experience was recently chronicled in The New York Times; Dr. Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson, a Social Epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in Ohio State’s College of Public Health; and Kyle Strickland, Deputy Director of Race and Democracy at the Roosevelt Institute. Together, they will examine the monumental shifts in civic engagement, awareness, and action surrounding structural racism, health disparities, and safety in our communities.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the moderator originally scheduled for this program, Dr. Amy Acton, will be unable to participate.
“The past year has brought the challenges surrounding public health and public safety into sharp focus, and it’s reinforced how there is no divorcing the two issues,” says Executive Director Johanna Burton. “The panel brings a diversity of informed experiences and perspectives to this year’s program. It’s going to be a fascinating and important conversation, one I cannot wait to hear.”
The program, entitled How Do We Get Well: On Public Health and Safety, will be live captioned. Questions about accessibility or additional accommodations such as ASL interpretation can be directed in advance to Helyn Marshall, Accessibility Manager, at accessibility@wexarts.org or (614) 688-3890.
The Director’s Dialogue for Art and Social Change is made possible by a grant from an anonymous donor.
To register for the virtual talk and learn more about Wex programming, go to wexarts.org.
(Full bios are available here.)
Autumn Glover is an urban planner who’s passionate about the intersection of race, place, and health. Currently she serves in a dual role with Partners Achieving Community Transformation (PACT), where she is president and a founding staff member, and Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center where, as senior director of community and civic engagement, she leads multiple projects including the development of a prevention-focused, healthy community center and an enterprise-wide health equity and anti-racism strategy.
PACT is a nonprofit focused on the disruption of intergenerational poverty and the creation of a mixed-income community through strategic investments and with an emphasis on housing, education, economic impact, and health. She is responsible for the design and implementation of PACT’s award-winning community engagement process and the development of the PACT Blueprint for Community Investment. This work resulted in more than $220 million in program and capital investments, including $30 million in HUD Choice Neighborhoods Planning and Implementation grants.
Glover teaches in Ohio State’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs and serves the Columbus community as a board member and volunteer through a number of organizations. Originally from Toledo, Glover lives in Columbus with her husband and daughter and holds a Master of City and Regional Planning and Master of Public Policy and Management from Ohio State.
Cameron A. Granger came up in Cleveland alongside his mother, Sandra, inheriting both her love of soul music and habit of apologizing too much. A graduate of Columbus College of Art & Design and a 2017 student of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, he uses his work to reconcile his position as an individual shaped by and existing in American history, its media, and all of its associated violence.
His recent projects include Ten Toes Down at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago; Pearl, a body of collaborative works with his mother at Ctrl+Shft in Oakland; and A library, for you, a traveling community library most recently housed at ikattha project space in Bombay, India. Granger also contributed to the Wexner Center Artist Residency Award project Cinetracts ’20 and Free Space, a gallery-based community initiative at the Wex in the fall of 2020.
Baseera Khan is a performance and visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work sublimates colonial histories through performance and sculpture in order to map geographies of the future.
Khan's visual art has been shown at institutions such as the Aspen Museum; Jenkins Johnson Projects; Participant, Inc.; and Simone Subal, New York. Khan's performance work has been presented at locations including the Whitney Museum and Art POP Montreal International Music Festival. Khan recently completed a performance residency at The Kitchen NYC. Khan is a recipient of the 2020 UOVO Artist Prize, the 2020 BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize, and the 2019 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant.
Khan is an adjunct professor of sculpture, performance, and critical theory. They hold an MFA from Cornell University and a BFA from the University of North Texas. They also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Dr. Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson is a Social Epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the College of Public Health at The Ohio State University. Her scholar-activism focuses on the impact of systems of oppression on the health of Black families and communities.
Dr. Sealy-Jefferson is the Founder and Director of the Social Epidemiology to Eliminate Disparities (SEED) Lab, the Principal Investigator of the Social Epidemiology to Combat Unjust Residential Evictions (SECURE) Study, and is the Chair-Elect of the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association.
Kyle Strickland is the Deputy Director of Race and Democracy at the Roosevelt Institute, a national think tank and nonprofit partner to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. As Deputy Director, Strickland works with experts and community leaders to advance policies that reimagine the American economy and democracy for the good of all.
Currently, Strickland is leading a multi-year racial justice landscape project that will provide a historical overview and analysis of the latest research, policy ideas, and political movement-building on race, economics, and politics. In addition, Strickland is the Senior Legal Analyst at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity at Ohio State and the Director of My Brother’s Keeper Ohio. A native of Columbus, Strickland earned his bachelor’s from The Ohio State University and a law degree from Harvard Law School, where he served as student body president.
Since 2006, the center's annual Director's Dialogues have explored social justice, identity politics, climate change, and health care, among other issues, with such leading cultural and academic figures as Ann Hamilton, Wil Haygood, Kerry James Marshall, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Jason Moran, Anna Deavere Smith, Lynne Tillman, and Patricia Williams.
