Please join us for a presentation and discussion by Equitable Vitrines Executive Director Yoon Ju Ellie Lee and Artistic Director Matt Connolly on its recent projects in Los Angeles.

In this lecture, Yoon Ju Ellie Lee and Matt Connolly of the Los Angeles nonprofit Equitable Vitrines will relate methods derived from nine years of contemporary art programming oriented toward non-art spaces and audiences.
From its inception, Equitable Vitrines has staged encounters between art practitioners and everyday people out of the conviction that art’s social utility is diminished when it becomes siloed within overly-sympathetic institutional and discursive frameworks. It has found that the suspicion with which contemporary art is occasionally met can help artists to evaluate whether their work is consistent with claims being made on its behalf.
This lecture will draw on recent research conducted by Equitable Vitrines on a little-known corporate art collection and educational program that was developed at First Bank System of Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the 1980s. This research is part of a broader effort by Equitable Vitrines to orient its work within a social history of US art organizations.

Introduction to the organization
Founded in 2014, Equitable Vitrines is a Los Angeles 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that organizes exhibitions and educational programming. Its work is based upon the conviction that art’s value lies in its capacity to facilitate the emergence of new aesthetic and discursive forms, which are needed to enhance humanity’s self-understanding in an era of unprecedented change.

About the Speaker
Yoon Ju Ellie Lee (b. 1988) is the co-founder and Executive Director of Equitable Vitrines. Additionally, she is co-founder, steering committee chair, and on the board of directors of GYOPO, an organization dedicated to interrogating issues around contemporary art, culture, and social justice through programming and community alliances. Lee serves as the secretary of the Korea Arts Foundation of America and is a founding member of the collective StopDiscriminAsian.

Matt Connolly (b. 1985) is an artist and the co-founder and Artistic Director of Equitable Vitrines. He is visiting faculty at the School of Art, California Institute of the Arts.