Fire Ecology

Art Papers Executive + Artistic Director Sarah Higgins introduces the Fire Ecology Project to the symposium audience. Higgins recounts a history of Art Papers that traces how arts funding structures have changed since the magazine’s founding. She identifies how the conditions that diminished Art Papers’ sustainability have been systemic, and how the perennially “crisis” in the nonprofit arts was, to some degree, prefigured in the institutional boom of the 1970s. Higgins presents the story of how those conditions impacted Art Papers over the years, and how they led to the final decision to sunset the organization. But first, as Higgins puts it, “We thought maybe we could become death doulas for the old, and midwives for something new.” …with an introduction by TK Smith.

Sarah Higgins (she/her) is Executive + Artistic Director of ART PAPERS, where she has also served as Editor since 2018. She was previously curator at the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University. She has curated more than 40 exhibitions featuring a range of emerging, established, and international artists for institutions such as the Hessel Museum of Art, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Higgins has worked as graduate program coordinator at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; community arts director and curator at Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida; and as an Educator at Artpace, in San Antonio, Texas. Higgins holds a BFA in Printmaking & Sculpture from the Atlanta College of Art and a MA in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.