2022 IKT Congress
Great Meadows Foundation, thanks to a $250,000 gift from Al Shands, was instrumental in bringing the 2022 IKT Congress to Kentucky—marking only the second time in nearly 50 years the international conference had been held in the United States.
Founded in 1973, the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT), is a professional organization that brings together curators from across the world to meet, share knowledge, exchange ideas and broaden their professional networks. Each year, a different IKT member hosts the organization’s annual congress in his or her city.
Julien Robson, director of Great Meadows Foundation and Joey Yates, curatorial director at KMAC Contemporary Art Museum—both longtime IKT members—led a team of advisors from the local arts community to organize a whirlwind tour of the region for the eighty-three contemporary art curators who arrived in Kentucky from twenty different countries. Over three days in September 2022, guests visited dozens of museums, arts venues, and artist studios in Louisville, Lexington, and Cincinnati, witnessing firsthand the depth, diversity, and energy of the arts communities in a region that has often been overlooked, mischaracterized, or maligned by the global art centers.
Global Appalachia Symposium
At the heart of each IKT Congress is a day-long symposium engaging with critical issues in contemporary art. In Kentucky, this event was held at The Speed Art Museum, where it attracted nearly 300 attendees interested in the topic of Global Appalachia. As the organizing curators explained,
Global Appalachia is a term that refers to a real, increasingly “global” geographical and cultural region in the United States, and to the realities of recalcitrant geographies—geographies that have persisted across political regimes and therefore might model a kind of resistance (even if they are always threatening regression). … Since the 1980s, curators have used various metaphors for globalism to organize exhibitions: from an old model of “east and west,” to a map of trans-global “trade winds,” to a dispersed network of “platforms,” to an affirmative “archipelago” of the new world order. The IKT 2022 symposium proposes “Global Appalachia” as a term that both extends and intervenes in this ongoing conversation.
Contributing to that conversation at the symposium was an impressive roster of speakers, including noted author Frank X. Walker, distinguished scholar Terry Smith, and internationally known artist Coco Fusco. Artist Mel Chin, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Jon Cherry, author Robert Gipe, and scholar Rebecca Adkins Fletcher all gave presentations and participated in an animated panel discussion on the theme of Gl
obal Appalachia. Poet Hannah Drake gave an emotionally stirring reading of her poem “Spaces,” and five artists from the region (Ché Rhodes, Elizabeth Mesa-Gaido, Vian Sora, Ceirra Evans, and Anissa Lewis) offered short presentations of their work.
Post-Congress Tour of Appalachia
Following the congress, a smaller group of curators were guided on a three-day tour of Appalachian Kentucky to experience the realities of the area that had been discussed at length in the symposium. Here, visitors witnessed an art community that was quietly thriving beneath the media coverage that tended to focus on the opioid crisis, the economic depression, and the so-called “hillbilly” culture that fostered abuse, alcoholism, and trauma. Whether on a tour of an underground coal mine, visiting with artists, or learning how to square dance at the community dining hall, the group of international curators embraced the Appalachian culture with enthusiasm and curiosity.
The complete 2022 IKT Congress itinerary and symposium program can be found on the IKT website.
