Great Meadows Foundation and The Carnegie have launched a new statewide symposium series dedicated to advancing critical discourse around contemporary art.
The inaugural symposium will take place at The Carnegie on Saturday, March 28 from Noon-6 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
At The Carnegie, keynote speakers 2024 Taft Museum Duncanson Artist-in- Residence Tunde Wey and Theo Schear will discuss the making of their film series Hard To Swallow. The docuseries describes Wey’s career while examining the social structures that disenfranchise Black people globally. Wey is a Nigerian immigrant artist, chef and writer working at the intersection of food and social politics. His work has been written about in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, and GQ. Wey’s own writing has been featured in The Boston Globe, Oxford American, CityLab, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Great Meadows Foundation will fund and support four symposia annually, creating sustained forums for dialogue that connect Kentucky artists and curators with leading voices in contemporary art. This new initiative reflects the Foundation’s long-standing commitment to fostering rigorous art criticism and expanding access to national and international conversations within the Commonwealth. Each year, symposia will take place in Louisville, Northern Kentucky, Central Kentucky, and Western Kentucky, with each region developing a unique program around a shared theme.
“The symposium series creates space not only for discussion, but for sustained exchange,” said Matt Distel, director of The Carnegie. “It allows artists, curators, and audiences to wrestle with the most pressing questions facing contemporary art today, while grounding those conversations in local contexts.”
The 2026 Great Meadows Foundation Symposium Series is titled Altered States. The series overall will explore how art, artists, and institutions adapt to rapidly changing circumstances affecting the production, distribution, funding, and visibility of art. Each regional committee may choose to focus on specific aspects of these concerns but the program is designed to speak to both those creating art and those invested in the long-term sustainability of art and culture in the public sphere. From artists deploying multiple strategies in their studios to institutions engaged in supporting creative communities, Altered States will serve as a gathering place for ideas and discussion toward practical and conceptual approaches to shifting landscapes.
The 2026 symposium chairpersons are:
• Central Kentucky: Jeffrey Johnson, director, School of Architecture,
University of Kentucky
• Louisville: Joey Yates, curatorial director, KMAC Contemporary Art Museum
• Northern Kentucky: Matt Distel, executive director, The Carnegie
• Western Kentucky: Yvonne Petkus, university distinguished professor and
artist, Western Kentucky University
The Carnegie