Vik Muniz: Scraps and Legal Tender

Vik Muniz lives and works in New York, NY and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is involved in social projects that use art-making as a force for change. In 2010 his work with a group of catadores—pickers of recyclable materials—was the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary film Waste Land. In recognition of his contributions to education and social development, Muniz was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 2011. In 2017, he founded Escola Vidigal, offering preschool and after-school programs in art, design, and technology to children 4 to 8 years old at the favela Vidigal in Rio de Janeiro. His work was most recently on view in Flora Industrialis at Museo Universidad de Navarra, Spain (2023-24), among many other solo exhibitions.

New York-based curator, art writer and educator Dan Cameron launched his career in 1982 with Extended Sensibilities at the New Museum, the first institutional effort in the US to examine gay & lesbian identity in art. For over forty years, Cameron has held senior curatorial positions at the New Museum, Orange County Museum of Art and CAC New Orleans, and organized more than a hundred museum exhibitions, including surveys of Martin Wong, David Wojnarowicz, Faith Ringgold, and others. In 2007, Dan founded Prospect New Orleans, the contemporary art triennial to benefit the city after Hurricane Katrina, and organized the first two editions. More recently, his book on Nicole Eisenman’s paintings was published in 2021 by Lund Humphries.