Aspen Art Museum

Brooklyn-based Keonna Hendrick is a cultural strategist, educator, and author who nurtures equity through art and museum education. Her teaching, writing, and strategic planning reflect her commitment to providing all audiences with educational experiences that promote critical thinking, expand cultural perceptions, and support self-actualization. Hendrick will engage in a conversation about dismantling repressive systems in museum education, as well as anti-racist approaches to teaching and communication.

Hallam Lake serves as the magical backdrop for imagination, play and the creation of art through a variety of mediums. The Aspen Art Museum and Aspen Center for Environmental Studies are excited to announce their collaborative Summer Workshops for kids entering Kindergarten in Fall 2021! We will be offering four workshops during the month of July, centered around all things nature and art. Participants will learn about bugs, trees, animals and flowers, and create artwork based on inspiration from each theme! Nature lends itself to fun and games and the opportunity to create playful art.

Join Elisabeth from the Aspen Art Museum and Phebe from Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) for a special Art Studio Live! Elisabeth and Phebe will take a nature walk around Hallam Lake to explore the design of animal homes, natural art-making materials, and the wonderful relationship between art, nature, and impermanence!

Lauren King is a soloist with the New York City Ballet whose Slow.Look.Live. session will engage with Maren Hassinger’s Roof Deck Sculpture Garden installation Paradise Regained (2020). Hassinger’s spindly and curved wire structures are inspired by the movement of grasses and reeds swaying in the wind, and appear to dance with the changing shadows of the day. For her session of Slow.Look.Live., King will speak about her evolving relationship to movement at this time and will lead viewers in a dance activity inspired by Hassinger’s installation.

In this week’s Art Studio Live!, we will build our own vibrant button tree! Please join us on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. (MT) to make unique and fun button trees that you can hang up on your wall!

Acclaimed artist Carrie Mae Weems will discuss RESIST COVID/TAKE 6!, her new art initiative currently featured in the Aspen Times Artist Takeover series. Weems’s project alludes to recommendations that people stay six feet apart from one another during the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to draw attention to the ways in which the deadly virus has disproportionately impacted people of color. Printed on posters, billboards, flyers, and other public-facing platforms, Weems’s photo-based campaign seeks to heighten public awareness of the impact of social and economic disparity while also paying homage to the essential workers who have placed themselves in harm’s way during the pandemic. Weems will speak about the immediate messaging of this project and prompt a broader dialogue about the long-term toll on the communities hardest hit by the pandemic.

Repurpose yogurt containers into planters in this week’s Art Studio Live! Join us at 2:30 p.m. (MT) and transform your food containers into vibrant homes for plants.

Summer Sloane-Britt is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University who recently relocated to Los Angeles. For this session of Slow.Look.Live., Sloane-Britt will speak about the complex politics of working within systems of higher education and museums, and how these institutions are both making slow but important changes that stem from grassroots movements. She will elaborate on the ways that systems are being called into question. Sloane-Britt will also speak about the weirdness of this moment and a nostalgia for a New York City that does not seem to exist anymore.

Do you have a favorite spot in your house or neighborhood? Is there a place you’ve always wanted to explore? Follow an AAM Educator around Aspen and learn to make a personalized map of your journey.

A Colorado native, Evan Zislis joins the Aspen Institute with over twenty years of experience in the Roaring Fork Valley as an educator, social entrepreneur, and community advocate. With a career focused on building relationships through program development and organizational leadership, Evan’s expansive network in the public and private sectors strategically positions him to launch and direct the Hurst Community Initiative. A collaboration among regional partners, this initiative aims to find solutions to emerging issues and offer support to local populations hit hardest by today’s defining challenges.