Participants interviewing one another during VoCA’s Artist Interview Workshop, held at the Fundación Cortés (San Juan, Puerto Rico), February 2024. Photo by Javier del Valle Beltrán.
“Although writing enables me to contextualize my work in a more rational and deliberate way, the immediacy of dialogue—even when it is just between the interviewer and the interviewee—can be transformative in relation to my practice. It provides a kind of access to my work, and to me as a person, that may not be entirely present in the art itself, and it can generate a new contextualization of my work.” – Daniela Rivera, in her presentation for a VoCA workshop in May 2023 (translated from Spanish)
We are pleased to announce that VoCA is now offering the program Interviews & Your Artistic Legacy, our Professional Development Workshop for artists. Hosted in partnership with museums and arts organizations, this one-day program welcomes an intergenerational selection of artists who seek to explore interviews as a tool for legacy planning.
About VoCA’s Professional Development Workshops
Interviews & Your Artistic Legacy aims to provide artists at all stages of their careers with a greater understanding of how interviews can be a vital tool for advocacy, legacy planning, and long-term stewardship. The program was initially developed in 2023 as an extension of VoCA’s signature Artist Interview Workshops, which gather and train arts professionals seeking to engage in thoughtful, guided conversations with artists. After more than a decade reflecting on the importance of listening to artists, these Professional Development Workshops flip the script, now focusing on the perspective of the artist, encouraging them to investigate the roles of interviewer and interviewee, and learn various approaches and methods that will empower them to engage in conversations in service of presenting and preserving their work.
Participants at VoCA’s Artist Interview Workshop held at the Rubell Collection (Miami, FL), 2015.
Aligning with VoCA’s ethos, the program foregrounds that interviews are not meant to be extractive; rather, dialogue can be a generative experience that serves artists to explore, discover, create, and develop narratives around their work and practice. Through a series of presentations, pair exercises, and group discussion, we invite artists to ask themselves: how can they optimize interviews as an opportunity to tell their own story? We consider not only the conversation itself, but also the “before” and the “after”.
Artists attending this Workshop program walk away with:
- Concrete, practical knowledge they can apply right away
- Information about the actual interview itself as well as the armature around it
- Knowing who VoCA is and what we do, how they can use us as a resource and engage in our network
- At least one new relationship in the Arts community
Artist Daniela Rivera presenting during VoCA’s Artist Interview Workshop at the Fundación Cortés (San Juan, Puerto Rico), February 2024. Photo by Javier del Valle Beltrán.
Each partnership, multiple new relationships
For each Professional Development Workshop, VoCA works closely with our hosts to tailor the agenda to the questions and topics that are of greatest interest and relevance to their artistic community. So far, Interviews and Your Artistic Legacy has been held both virtually and in-person in collaboration with the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Each experience has brought to light a different set of rich conversations. Select program leaders include curator and art historian Chad Alligood, conservator Steven O’Banion (Glenstone), curator Jen Mergel (Executive Director at Esplanade Association), oral historian Sam Redman, VoCA Program Director Margaret Graham, artist and legacy specialist Mira Friedlaender, cultural strategist Tessa Shultz (National Geographic Society), curator Solana Chehtman (Director of Artist Programs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation) and legacy specialist Ursula Davila-Villa (Davila-Villa & Stothart), with guest presentations by artists Daniela Rivera and Mario Martinez.
Over the years, VoCA has been proud to serve as a resource for a wide range of artists, first offering opportunities to go on the record with our VoCA Talks, and now empowering them to shape their own legacies via programs like Interviews & Your Artistic Legacy. It has been a privilege to play even a small part in sharing their stories and stewarding their legacies, and we are more convinced than ever that documenting artists’ voices matters.
Artist Emmett Wigglesworth during the filming of his CALL/VoCA Talk with Christie Mitchell, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (Queens, NY), 2016.
If you have any questions about upcoming workshops, please contact our Program Manager at pablo@voca.network – or, if you’re interested in bringing this program to your community or institutions, do not hesitate to reach out to our Program Director at margaret@voca.network.