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Stefan Sagmeister's The Happy Show, installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 2012. Image courtesy of the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Questions of Practice: Institute of Contemporary Art Director Amy Sadao on How Audience Feedback Impacts Curatorial Choices

Questions of Practice: Institute of Contemporary Art Director Amy Sadao on How Audience Feedback Impacts Curatorial Choices

Institute of Contemporary Art director Amy Sadao talks with us about the importance of inviting audience feedback when developing programming and the interpretation of contemporary artists’ ideas within a museum context. Evoking art critic Holland Cotter, she says, “none of us are in positions to be the teacher, but we should avail ourselves of the opportunity to be the student.”

Institute of Contemporary Art Director Amy Sadao on curatorial and programmatic decision-making. Filmed on September 8, 2015 at the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Amy Sadao is director at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania. Appointed in 2012, Sadao has overseen ICA’s 50th anniversary season and recent presentations of Nicole Eisenman, Ruanne Abbas and Basel Abou-Rahme, Jayson Musson and Pew Fellow Alex Da Corte, as well as the Center-funded exhibitions, Barbara Kasten: Stages and the upcoming Endless Shout. Before assuming the directorship of ICA, she served for 10 years as executive director of Visual AIDS in New York City.