Curating Engagement
Published by Wagner Foundation and Public Trust
Wagner Foundation and Public Trust present Curating Engagement, a new publication, available as a free pdf and printed book, addressing the evolving role of curatorial practice at the intersection of public life, institutional responsibility, and community collaboration. Bringing together more than fifty curators, artists, and educators, the publication reflects on how cultural practitioners are rethinking engagement amid shifting social, political, and economic conditions.
Edited by Aaron Levy (Executive and Artistic Director, Public Trust), Abigail Satinsky (Senior Program Officer and Curator for Art & Culture, Wagner Foundation), and Daniel Tucker (Curator-in-Residence, Public Trust), the book emerges from a national field-building retreat hosted at Public Trust in Philadelphia in June 2025. The gathering brought together practitioners working across museums, independent spaces, academia, and community based initiatives to examine what it means to work with and be accountable to the public today. The publication captures this exchange through dialogues, essays, and case studies that foreground collaboration, experimentation, and long term relationship building as central to curatorial practice.
Public Trust’s interdisciplinary approach bridging art, education, health, and ecology provides a foundation for the project, emphasizing dialogue and collective inquiry as essential tools for cultural work today. Central to the project is Wagner Foundation’s commitment to art as a catalyst for social transformation. For more than two decades, the foundation has supported initiatives that advance health equity, economic wellbeing, and cultural vitality. Through its Art and Culture program, Wagner Foundation has helped position artists and curators as agents of change, investing in exhibitions, publications, and public facing projects across local and national contexts. The foundation distributes more than forty arts and culture grants annually and supports artists through initiatives such as the Wagner Arts Fellowship, a Boston focused award recognizing artists whose work engages urgent social questions.
Curating Engagement arrives at a moment of urgency for the arts sector. Declining public funding, shifts in audience engagement, and growing scrutiny of institutional relevance have prompted renewed questions about the role of curators and cultural organizations. Rather than offering prescriptive solutions, the publication presents perspectives that grapple with the tensions inherent in socially engaged practice.
The book’s opening section presents case studies from practitioners who have developed sustained, community centered projects, illuminating the challenges and possibilities of working across institutional and grassroots contexts. Next is a series of group dialogues that document conversations from the retreat, organized around themes such as solidarity, leadership, sustainability, and ethics. These exchanges highlight the labor of relationship building and the importance of trust, care, and accountability in curatorial work.
Contributors include With Alliyah Allen, Phoebe Bachman, Rob Blackson, Kristin Fleischmann Brewer, James Claiborne, Joyce Chung, Ryan N. Dennis, Lisa Dent, De’Wayne Drummond, Vashti DuBois, Ruth Erickson, Ryan Strand Greenberg, Pablo Helguera, Maori Karmael Holmes, Miranda Kyle, Aaron Levy, Charles Lomax, Audrey N. Lopez, Faheem Majeed, Marina McDougall, Monica O. Montgomery, Julian Moore-Griffin, Nicole Pollard, José Ortiz-Pagán, Jameson Paige, Umika Pathak, Aislinn Pentecost-Farren, Emilio Martinez Poppe, Risa Puleo, Damon Reaves, Prerana Reddy, Jerome Reyes, Imani Roach, Christopher R. Rogers, Abigail Satinsky, Carol Stakenas, Marissa Del Toro, Daniel Tucker, Ashley Tyner, Megan Voeller, Brittany Webb, Rachel Wenrick, Linnea West, Risë Wilson, Sue Bell Yank, and Lu Zhang.
The publication concludes with dialogues that trace long term collaborations, emphasizing process over outcome and underscoring the importance of time, reciprocity, and shared authorship. Together, these sections position Curating Engagement as both a record of a convening and a resource for practitioners committed to reimagining the role of art and institutions in public life.
In line with Wagner Foundation and Public Trust’s emphasis on access and equity, Curating Engagement is available as a free digital publication. A print edition is also available for purchase through Public Trust’s website bookshop.
By centering collective knowledge and lived experience, Curating Engagement contributes to a broader movement seeking to redefine curatorial practice as relational, responsive, and grounded in shared responsibility.
