ALT-ECONOMY
Contemporary art workers are increasingly called upon to navigate the complex and often opaque networks of funding, sponsorship, and economic systems that underpin cultural production...
This line of inquiry critically examines the curator's role in mediating between diverse economic stakeholders - public institutions, private donors, commercial entities, and grassroots organisations - while maintaining critical autonomy and ethical responsibility. Beyond financial navigation, the economy itself emerges as a pressing thematic concern, demanding curatorial and artistic strategies that address systemic inequalities, labour conditions, and the often invisible infrastructures sustaining artistic practices. This line addresses how curators can render visible these hidden economies and forms of labour, challenging dominant narratives and fostering critical awareness of the socio-economic dimensions shaping contemporary art and culture.
Professors
.png&w=640&q=75)
Federica Fragapane
Federica Fragapane is an independent information designer. Over the years, she has created data visualization projects for the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Publications Office of the European Union, the BBC, Scientific American, Google, Triennale Milano, and La Lettura of Corriere della Sera. In 2023, three of her data visualizations became part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Across many of her projects, she adopts an experimental approach, carefully selecting visual languages to invite readers to explore the stories told by the data.
Keir Milburn
Dr. Keir Milburn is a writer, researcher, and consultant. He has a background as an academic in political economy and organisation theory and is currently co-director of the action-research think tank Abundance. He is the author of Generation Left (2019 Polity) and co-author, along with Bertie Russell and Kai Heron, of Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future (2025). As a member of the Red Plenty Games Collective he also designs and runs political strategy games and uses game play to research common political imaginaries. He also co-hosts the popular #ACFM podcast on Novara Media.
Caroline Woolard
Caroline Woolard is a founding co-organizer of Art.coop and Head of Strategy at Pollinator.coop. She is the Area Head of Foundations in the Department of Art and Design at Montclair State University and the co-author of two major reports: Solidarity Not Charity (Grantmakers in the Arts, 2021) and Spirits and Logistics (Center for Cultural Innovation, 2022) and three books: Making and Being (Pioneer Works, 2019), a book for educators about interdisciplinary collaboration, co-authored with Susan Jahoda; Art, Engagement, Economy (onomatopee, 2020) a book about managing socially-engaged and public art projects; and TRADE SCHOOL: 2009-2019, a book about peer learning that Woolard catalyzed in thirty cities internationally over a decade. Woolard’s artwork has been featured twice on New York Close Up (2014, 2016), a digital film series produced by Art21 and broadcast on PBS. https://carolinewoolard.com/
Art historian, publisher and curator
Morad Montazami
Morad Montazami is an art historian, a publisher and a curator. After serving at Tate Modern, she is now the founder of the platform Zamân Books & Curating, committing her studies to transnational studies of Arab, Asian and African modern and contemporary art.
Subscribe to the newsletter
