Literati is pleased to host a reading and conversation with Nicolas Lampert, author of A People’s Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements, facilitated by U of M Art and Design professor Nick Tobier
Nicolas Lampert is a Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist and author whose work focuses on themes of social justice and ecology. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum, among others. Collectively, he works with two groups: the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative - a worker-owned printmaking cooperative of twenty-five artists in North America that formed in 2007 and ReciproCity – a mobile experimental cultural center that focuses on urban agricultural projects and community activism in Milwaukee and beyond. Lampert’s past work includes collaborating as an artist on actions with TAMMS Year Ten, IVAW, and the Chicago chapter of the Rain Forest Action Network. His first book A People’s Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements was published by The New Press in 2013 and is part of the People’s History Series edited by Howard Zinn. Lampert is a full-time faculty member (academic staff appointment) in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a joint appointment in Printmaking and Writing and Critical Thinking.
Nick Tobier, Associate Proffessor at The Universtiy of Michigan Stamps School of Art and Design, is a public performer whose work is rooted in the social lives of public places. He studied landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and subsequently worked as a landscape architect in private practice and with the NYC Parks Department, Bronx Division. Tobier's interest in the potential of public places has manifested itself in built public projects and actions in San Francisco, Detroit and New York, internationally from Toronto to Tokyo.