Part of the Practice
What is social practice, and how does it affect the ways we navigate our lives and make change in the world? Join artists, scholars, and collaborators from Social Practice CUNY on Part of the Practice, hosted by Catherine LaSota, as we discuss our individual art practices, our communities, and the role of socially-engaged art in our work for social justice.
Part of the Practice
26: Building Better Museums with Tom Finkelpearl
In this final episode before we take a brief holiday break during season two of Part of the Practice, host Catherine LaSota is in conversation with SPCUNY Teaching Scholar-in-Residence Tom Finkelpearl. Tom is a former Director of the Queens Museum and is also a former Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City. In this conversation, he talks about the relationship between museums and social practice, the reasons that community-engaged projects often happen in coordination with the education departments of museums, and the importance of having artists in residence at museums. Catherine and Tom also talk about the book that Tom is currently working on in collaboration with Pablo Helguera, on the challenges facing American art museums.
FULL TRANSCRIPT of Episode 26 available here.
About our guest:
Tom Finkelpearl organized fifteen shows at PS1 in the 1980s, managed over 100 public art commissions at the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in the 1990s, spearheaded a 50,000 square foot expansion as Director of the Queens Museum (2002-2014), and oversaw the city’s cultural policy and funding when he returned to DCLA as Commissioner (2014-2020). Since then, was a consultant for the Mellon Foundation (2020-21), and was appointed Social Practice Teaching Scholar in Residence at SPCUNY (2023-present). He co-curated a show of Christine Sun Kim’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2025) and Walker Art Center (2026). Currently he is working on his third book, Recast the Museum (working title) in collaboration with the artist Pablo Helguera.
More about Tom Finkelpearl:
Instagram: @tomfinkelpearl
LinkedIn: Tom Finkelpearl
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Thank you to our podcast editor Jade Iseri-Ramos, and thank you to Gaius LaSota for our Part of the Practice music.
Part of the Practice logo courtesy of Maliyah Mohamed.
Social Practice CUNY is funded by the Mellon Foundation.