Temple Contemporary’s mission is to creatively reimagine the social function of art through questions of local relevance and international significance. Our programming is determined by a thirty-five member advisory council representing a broad spectrum of Philadelphia.
We engage with these questions the way two people of mutual respect enter a conversation. Therefore, there is no way of knowing when or how our commitment to these questions will end. It is a process of becoming. The extent of the public’s participation in these questions (determined by audience feedback, web hits, discussions) is the deciding factor of how long we continue to address a question through public programming. By forcing ourselves into a public position of service to these questions it has necessitated a fundamental power shift. This re-ordering of conventional gallery values necessitates a foregrounding of curatorial accountability, reciprocity, and exchange that forms the basis of Temple Contemporary’s social life, and by extension, our social values.