ARTIST advocacy

Sharon Louden's work as an advocate for artists is extensive and growing. Her visionary efforts to create opportunities and collaborate extend not only to fellow artists, but also to curators, critics, museum professionals, educators, and others. Although Sharon focuses her energy as a catalyst, collaborator and connector in the following areas below, her advocacy and community building is ongoing and spread across many different channels at the same time. The underlying ongoing principal that connects all of her work is the simple idea that generosity yields generosity.

 

Wichita, Kansas
2018

CONSULTING

With decades of experience working in academia, the non-profit sector, and the corporate world — coupled with Board memberships and organizing countless informal community gatherings, Sharon has accumulated a vast trove of personal and professional networks that she activates to help connect individuals and organizations throughout the country. Her primary goal is to create opportunities and partnerships for others by sharing resources that will lead to measurable outcomes, both monetarily and creatively.

Informed by collaborations and conversations with gallery owners, museum professionals, critics, curators, 501 (c) (3) organizations, residencies, academics and others in different art communities, her vantage point puts her in a unique position to identify and build relationships between siloed organizations that help to assist in programming initiatives and realizing individual missions.

For more detail on Sharon’s consulting efforts over the years, please visit this page.

 

Conversation Tours

MIT List Visual Arts Center
2018

The Living and Sustaining a Creative Life conversation tours which began in 2013 have so far led to over 160 events across the country and abroad involving more than 11,000 attendees. The most recent conversation tour, which used The Artist as Culture Producer as a platform for conversation, connected and created opportunities over a 100+ stop tour. Through panel discussions, symposia, workshops, casual conversations, and town-hall forums, Sharon cross-pollinates contributors from her books with local artists, critics, curators, thought leaders, non-profit organizations, and other members of the general public to learn about, lend their voices to, and be inspired by the vast range of influence that artists exert on society today. Frequent collaborators have included Hrag Vartanian, Wendy Red Star, Austin Thomas and Sharon Butler

The measurable outcome from these events continues to be substantial and wide-ranging, including employment and exhibition opportunities, community building, individual validation, and implementation of new ideas. Data culled from attendees has clearly revealed what is needed and wanted by artists in every community. The data was collected to form a case study that was shared publicly in different forms, including an exhibition in a collaboration with artist and Living and Sustaining a Creative Life contributor Jennifer Dalton.

The Ford Foundation endorsed the The Artist as Culture Producer Conversation Tour with fiscal support for events that cross-pollinated book contributors with local artists in communities who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to participate.

www.livesustain.org

Creative Capital Gathering
South Jersey Arts Council

November 2019

University of California San Diego
February 2020

Hrag Vartanian & Sharon Louden
Strand Book Store, New York, NY
March 2017

 

Fundraising & Partnerships

Sharon acts as an ambassador from the front lines of artist communities across the country, sharing first-hand accounts with important nonprofit organizations and foundations. Her contributions and partnerships vary depending on the needs of each organization and include mentoring, consulting, leading workshops and webinars, and serving on boards. At every opportunity, Sharon shares with fellow community members to further these organizations' missions and create opportunities for artists.

Sharon currently consults Joan Mitchell Foundation grantees and is a consultant for the Creative Capital and Americans for the Arts, culling and contributing information.

 

Teaching, Public Speaking & Panel Moderating

Yale University
February 2020

Sharon has taught for 30 years since graduating from Yale University School of Art in 1991. Her teaching experience includes studio and professional practice classes to students of all levels in many institutions throughout the United States. Colleges and universities at which she has lectured and taught include: Kansas City Art Institute, College of Saint Rose, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Vanderbilt University and Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been invited as a visiting artist all across the country and abroad.

Sharon is currently a faculty member in the MFA Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. From 2011 to 2019, she also served as Senior Critic at the New York Academy of Art where she organized a popular lecture series interviewing luminaries and exceptional individuals in the art world and beyond. Louden organized and moderated the Chautauqua Visual Arts Lecture Series, a once-a-month, year ‘round opportunity to meet and hear luminaries speak about their work from the art world and beyond. While Director of the Chautauqua Visual Arts, she would also conduct workshops focused on making a living as a working artist — covering grants, fellowships, art markets and commissions — to artists participating in the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum’s artist in residency program in Western, NY. In addition, Sharon has participated in over 350 panel discussions and group convenings over the years, acting as moderator for many of those in museums, galleries, universities, and nonprofit organizations both in the states and abroad.

In her capacity as a community facilitator, Sharon is frequently called upon to make recommendations of artists and critics for visiting artist programs of all sizes and attempts to give opportunities to artists who are generous to other artists from all over the world.

 

Videos:


Profile of Sharon by The New Yorker Brand Studio focused on her mentoring initiatives and models of generosit. Accompanying interview on The New Yorker can be viewed here.

February 2024



Sharon interviewed in her studio on NY1 TV during DUMBO Open Studios.

Twice a year in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, real estate developer, Two Trees, sponsors a free weekend where 50 artist studios are opened to the general public. As part of their Cultural Space Subsidy Program, Louden Studio was the setting for this short story by local news channel, NY1.

April 2024


A series of one-hour long conversations with women leaders in education led by James Campbell of Intellect Books. In honor of Women’s Equality Day.

August 2022


Artist talk as part of “The Friends at 50: Selections from the Collection” exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art, on view March 9, 2022 - June 12, 2022.

March 24, 2022

 


”Art and interior design meet with this masterclass moderated by Aspect/Ratio Director and MCA Chicago Executive Board Member, Jennifer Armetta. Learn from artist Sharon Louden and collector Joe Reece about how they live with art.”

April 2, 2021


New York Academy of Art produced this panel discussion about artist residencies, featuring:
Christopher Carroll (Program Manager at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture)
Philip Himberg (Executive Director of the MacDowell Colony)
Sharon Louden (Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Visual Arts)

March 16, 2021

 


Based in Singapore, the Melting Pot Collection is an “inspiring podcast & video series, presenting stories of culturally diverse and passionate individuals. “

February 8, 2021


Panel discussion led by Sharon celebrating the exhibition “Honoré Sharrer: Claws Sheathed in Velvet,” Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY

Featuring: Natalie Frank (artist), ArtTable Executive Director, Jessica Porter, and St. Louis Art Museum Curator of American Art, Melissa Wolfe.

May 7, 2019

Intellect Book’s International Marketing Manager, James Campbell, interviews Sharon Louden in an Instagram Live event.

Sharon describes the current state of affairs leading the visual arts residency at Chautauqua Institution during the Covid Pandemic, the progress of her Book Series, and her own work in 2020 with her book publisher, Intellect Books.

Instagram: July 8, 2020

 

Podcasts:

 

Radio Interviews:

Vega, Tanzina, “Who Gets to Make a Living as an Artist?," The Takeaway, WNYC Studios, April 30, 2019

 

Press

Creative Capital Gathering
South Jersey Arts Council, 2019