SOCIAL PRACTICE QUEENS

Social Practice CUNY is an expansion of Social Practice Queens (SPQ). Founded in 2010, SPQ is a unique pedagogical experiment and educational platform that supports the integration of studio art with interdisciplinary research, community collaboration, environmental justice and critical urbanism. SPQ links together the resources of an academic institution, Queens College and the City University of New York (CUNY), and the long-standing community-based activism of the Queens Museum and other partnering institutions. SPQ’s goal is to initiate real-world change through practices of care, social intervention and aesthetic experimentation.

SPCUNY supports Queens College MFA students who belong to the SPQ concentration with tuition remission in their second year, project support, mentorship, and connections to socially-engaged artists at the graduate and faculty levels across CUNY campuses. These second-year SPQ students are designated SPCUNY Student Fellows and participate in the larger SPCUNY Cohort.

For more about SPQ, and to explore past projects and publications, visit the SPQ website:

On view at the Queens Museum from March 24–August 29, 2021, Art As Social Action honored the decade-long pedagogical experiment of Social Practice Queens by featuring interdisciplinary projects by nine local and international SPQ alumni: Alix Camacho-Vargas, Floor Grootenhuis (with Joel Murphy), Cody Herrmann, Jeff Kasper, Naomi Kuo, Julian Louis Phillips, Erin Turner, Pedro Felipe Vintimilla Burneo, and the Workers Art Coalition. The exhibition demonstrated a particular focus on issues of care: how do we provide for and celebrate each other in the context of intersecting concerns, including climate change, gentrification, and struggles with togetherness. Below, you can view or download the exhibition catalog archiving the exhibit and associated public programs, and including supplemental interviews and essays.

EXHIBITION CATALOG