The INSTITUTE FOR
AESTHETIC ADVOCACY

The Institute for Aesthetic Advocacy is a Minneapolis-based art collective that uses innovative curatorial practices and gallery spaces to help break down the digital divides that have made it harder for everyone to decide what is true and who can be trusted. The IAA prides itself on producing and promoting academically peer-reviewed “aesthetic education” exhibits that can also be curated to provide supplemental materials for social activism or legal action.  We are especially interested in using gallery spaces as a means of navigating scientific and technological controversies during a time of rampant institutional distrust.

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The Institute for Aesthetic Advocacy is a Minneapolis-based collective dedicated to the use of museum spaces to push the boundaries of both academic research and public education in our precious post-digital moment.

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The Institute for Aesthetic Advocacy (IAA) is a Minneapolis-based art collective that uses interdisciplinary art practices, digital media, and rhetorical theory in order to re-invent gallery spaces as sites of public intellectualism and cross-cultural mediation in an algorithmically polarized world.

 

In short, we want cutting-edge art venues to be the places for conversations that are harder to have at Thanksgiving.

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The Institute for Aesthetic Advocacy is a Minneapolis-based art collective that uses innovative curatorial practices and gallery spaces to help break down the digital divides that have made it harder for everyone to decide what is true and who can be trusted. The IAA prides itself on producing and promoting academically peer-reviewed “aesthetic education” exhibits that can also be curated to provide supplemental materials for social activism or legal action.  We are especially interested in using gallery spaces as a means of navigating scientific and technological controversies during a time of rampant institutional distrust.

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The IAA’s “meta” curatorial strategy (particularly post-COVID) is to catalyze cross-cultural community engagement via exhibit interactivity and placement.  In addition to our coalition of sculptors and rhetoricians, the IAA strategically designs and curates its participation to “aesthetically enact” a particular bio-medical or ethical experience (these are then curated for public consumption by gallery patrons, educators, lawmakers, advocates, and citizens).

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We use new media art practices and community partnerships to facilitate dialogue around the public health crises and controversies that shape our society.  Whether it’s mental illness or environmental illness, PTSD or disability, violent crime or civic restoration, the IAA seeks to create a “public square” for these conversations using digital technology and curated exhibits.  Regardless of issue or theme, we consistently offer a venue for artists to tell their stories of health and healing.  We also offer a deliberative space for community members, advocates, and policy-makers to hear one another on problems that impact all of us.  All of our events are organized and curated according to XYZ principles, which we also use to “aesthetically enact” a particular bio-medical or ethical experience (these are then curated for public consumption by gallery patrons, educators, lawmakers, advocates, and citizens).

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Why Aesthetic Advocacy

We use new media art practices and community partnerships to facilitate dialogue around the public health crises and controversies that shape our society.  Whether it’s mental illness or environmental illness, PTSD or disability, violent crime or civic restoration, the IAA seeks to create a “public square” for these conversations using digital technology and curated exhibits.  Regardless of issue or theme, we consistently offer a venue for artists to tell their stories of health and healing.  We also offer a deliberative space for community members, advocates, and policy-makers to hear one another on problems that impact all of us.  All of our events are organized and curated according to XYZ principles, which we also use to “aesthetically enact” a particular bio-medical or ethical experience (these are then curated for public consumption by gallery patrons, educators, lawmakers, advocates, and citizens).

 

The IAA's Curatorial Initiatives and Aesthetic Innovations
 

• Algorithmic Racial Justice: “Digital Rights Are Civil Rights”
  In partnership with ACLU MN, Stanford’s Race and Technology Fellows, Councilman Steve Fletcher, and the IDH, we presented an international arts exhibition (with Little Earth)  to the Minneapolis and international arts communities.
   

• Cross-Cultural Public Health Dialogue: CICA Museum, Rhetorical Society of America (2018 and 2020), Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Symposium; Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, NE Sculpture| Gallery, Zverver Center of Contemporary Art, and Wheaton College. / “Contaminated 1” (Juried)

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The IAA has exhibited and peer-reviewed in the following galleries and forums: