What is the role of the arts in activating and sustaining democratic life? How have artists sustained the rights of free expression? Why are some forms of artistic expression censored? How have the arts contributed to social movements? Should the arts have a politically useful role? Or stay strategically “un-useful”? In different eras and regions of the world, artists have responded to these questions quite differently. This lecture explores a range of socially engaged art practices, considering how some seek to make community, how some seek to expose inequity, and how some open new ideas of what democracy might mean.

Shannon Jackson is the Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Professor of the Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley and the Chair of the History of Art department. Her research, teaching, and convening focus on the role of visual, literary, performance, and media art forms in social movements and in public life, with a recent focus on ecological aesthetics. For more information use this link to the PBK website; https://www.pbk.org/visitingscholars/2025-2026/shannon-jackson

Time of event coming soon.