Mary Jane Jacob
Mary Jane Jacob, Curator and Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, participated in the TALK Series program.
![Talk Series Mary Jane Jacob](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmyndlistarmidstod.payload.is%2Fmedia%2Ftalk-series-mary-jane-jacob-2000x1428.jpg&w=2048&q=80)
April 30, 2015
Experiencing Social Practice
Mary Jane Jacob, Curator and Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, participated in the TALK Series program. Jacob gave a lecture titled “Experiencing Social Practice”.
We have seen a pronounced acceleration in the number of projects that involve working directly with people. Artists speak passionately about this work; curators find it rewarding as they stretch their practices; and audiences are changed. Meanwhile critics seem confused by what it is all about, their writings bounded by socio-political theories or art histories, without consideration for the lived experience of the participant-viewers.
In the lecture, Mary Jane Jacob drew upon American philosopher John Dewey whose understanding of human experience led him to conclude that art is a powerful agent of self-realization and social change. From this perspective, Jacob addressed what processes we undergo in the art experience; art as a lived practice for artists; and how art—and especially socially engaged art projects—affords others access to living life as a conscious practice.
Mary Jane Jacob is a curator who, through hundreds of exhibitions, site-specific and community-based projects, and public programs, has worked with artists to expand the practice and public discourse of art as a shared process. Study into the nature of the art experience has led to the anthologies: Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, Learning Mind: Experience into Art, Chicago Makes Modern: How Creative Minds Changed Society, and The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists. As Professor and Executive Director of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is recently spearheaded a major research project leading to the Chicago Social Practice History Series.