Like Art? Hire Artists: The Cultural Infrastructure for Creative Collaboration
Nov 14, 2025 noon Eastern/9am Pacific-1:30 Eastern/10:30 Pacific
This webinar will explore the transformative potential of integrating artists into non-art academic structures in long-term positions. Drawing on five years of experience from the Target Studio for Creative Collaboration at the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum, the speakers will present theoretical and practical approaches to curating sustainable artist-researcher partnerships across disciplines. They will present case studies from mental health research and engineering pedagogy, demonstrating how artists’ unique perspectives enhance clinical, research and teaching practice.
Throughout, they will address crucial questions: What kinds of artists can be effective collaborators in university settings? How can universities create sustainable structures for these partnerships? How do we fund collaborations outside predetermined disciplinary frameworks? The presenters will offer practical insights for cultivating meaningful artist-researcher partnerships that advance arts integration across higher education.
Speakers
Boris Oicherman
Boris Oicherman is the founder of Hybrid Arts, a consulting practice that develops cross-sector partnerships between creative, academic, and civic institutions. He brings an unusual combination of technical expertise and cultural leadership experience, having served as Director of Arts and Culture at The Cleveland Foundation and inaugural Curator for Creative Collaboration at the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum. His work focuses on building institutional frameworks that position artists as knowledge producers and catalysts for transformation across disciplines.
Yuko Taniguchi
Yuko Taniguchi is an assistant professor of Medicine and Arts| Arts in Health at the Center for Learning Innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester. She is also the author of a volume of poetry, Foreign Wife Elegy (2004), and a novel, The Ocean in the Closet (2007), both published by Coffee House Press. She regularly collaborates with artists and healthcare professionals to explore how creative activities lead to self-discovery and healing.
Gudrun Lock
Gudrun Lock makes artwork using photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, and social practice strategies. She has installed pieces in foreclosed homes, empty storefronts, brownfields, the Atlantic Ocean, and a hole in her backyard. Interested in engaging human and other-than-human partners, a long-term focus aims to revitalize the buffers of active rail land. In 2023 she became an artist in residence in an experimental interdisciplinary graduate program focused on water, energy, and materials circularity in the engineering department at the University of Minnesota.
Registration
Registration for a2ru webinars is free for a2ru individual members and for those affiliated as faculty, students, or staff at a2ru institutional or departmental members. Please use your institutional email while registering.
Registration for non-members is $20, and registration for non-member students is $10.