Public Lecture | Amanda Cachia

April 16 | 2 p.m. | Art Building, room 232 | Zoom
 

Disability, Institutional Critique & the Art Museum

In this lecture, Amanda Cachia will discuss her curatorial and scholarly work that examines the genre of institutional critique and the museum through the generative lens of disability art, disability justice, and activism. Cachia will demonstrate these ideas through her three recent and upcoming book projects, The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art and Institutional Critique (2024), Hospital Aesthetics: Disability, Medicine, Activism (2025) and Rehabilitating the Asylum: Mental Health Justice and Contemporary Art (in progress). In addition, Cachia will share how her recent and upcoming curatorial projects contribute to reframing the museum from a disability justice perspective, including Smoke & Mirrors, held at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University (Fall 2024), Weaving In, Weaving Out in collaboration with Intertwine Arts in New York (projected for 2026), and the upcoming touring exhibition Aesthetics of Care: Access, Art, and Transformation managed by Mid-America Arts Alliance. Combined, this work emphasizes the generative possibilities for the museum to embrace the needs of their disabled audiences to become a healthier and more accessible space for its diverse audiences.

Amanda Cachia specializes in disability art activism across intersectional axes of difference, including gender, race, and sexuality. She has a PhD in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the University of California San Diego. She has curated approximately 50 exhibitions, many of which have traveled to cities across the USA, England, Australia and Canada. She is the Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of the Arts Leadership Graduate Program at the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston. She is the 2023 grantee of the Creative Capital Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for her second book, "Hospital Aesthetics: Disability, Medicine, Activism."

Image: "Smoke & Mirrors," installation, curated by Amanda Cachia, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, Fall 2024.