Anne Pasternak, Ben Jones, and Dan Sallick

Anne Pasternak, Ben Jones, and Dan Sallick will discuss how museums can be more effective as digital platforms to make art and artists’ narratives more accessible and reach wider audiences.

Since 2015, Anne Pasternak has served as the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, one of the oldest and largest fine arts institutions in the nation. For more than thirty years, Anne has devoted her career to engaging broad audiences with the limitless power of art to move, motivate, and inspire. As a staunch advocate for the civic and democratic roles our cultural and educational institutions can play, she is committed to projects that demonstrate the crucial links between art and social justice.

Prior to joining the Brooklyn Museum, Anne served as the President and Artistic Director of Creative Time for two decades, where she initiated projects that gave artists opportunities to respond to political and environmental challenges, while also expanding their practice and work globally. She collaborated with hundreds of artists, including Nick Cave, Paul Chan, Jenny Holzer, and Kara Walker, commissioning and presenting works that ranged from sculptural installations in Grand Central Station’s Vanderbilt Hall to skywriting over Manhattan, as well as Tribute in Light, the twin beacons of light that illuminated the sky above the former World Trade Center site, and continue to be presented on the anniversaries of 9/11.

Ben Jones is the Creative Director for the Unskippable Labs team at Google, which designs experiments to explore the future of advertising. He works with brands and their creative and media agencies to draw on the best of technology, culture, media and storytelling. His work takes him inside most major global advertisers and the top advertising agencies, helping shape them for this digital/mobile age. He came from Hill Holliday, where he worked on Dunkin’ Donuts, Johnson and Johnson and Major League Baseball. Prior to that, he was at Digitas, where he ran global loyalty for IHG, led campaigns for Holiday Inn, Samsung, and SAP, among many others, including providing the voice of the Aflac Duck in social media. Prior to that, Ben was the Dean of Admissions at Bennington College, building a network of early stage venture funds, and publishingThe Rope Eater, a novel, with Doubleday.

Dan Sallick: In 1999, Dan and Paul Frick founded Subject Matter legacy firm Home Front Communications, which grew into a fully integrated communications and advertising firm, before merging with lobbying firm Elmendorf | Ryan to form Subject Matter. Prior to that, Dan worked in political campaigns and government, serving as press secretary to House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt and as communications director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the successful 1998 election cycle. He is the chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A graduate of Rollins College, he was an NCAA All-American in tennis in 1991. Dan is also a former board member of the Judd Foundation. (http://teamsubjectmatter.com/team/dan-sallick/)

The event will conclude with a poetry reading from Phong Bui, Publisher and Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail.

The New Social Environment — Daily conversations with artists, writers, filmmakers, poets around the world where we discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality.