San Francisco Art Institute

Radhika Subramaniam is the Director and Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design, where she is also an assistant professor of art and design history and theory. Her research interests lie in everyday sensory urbanisms and cultures of catastrophe. Her curatorial practice is cross-disciplinary and dialogic, committed to public pedagogy, critical urbanism, and political and social justice. She previously served as director of cultural programs at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), where she commissioned several public art projects in downtown Manhattan and oversaw a program of art and ideas.

Recent projects include Living Concrete/Carrot City, co-curated with Nevin Cohen; Art in Odd Places: Sign; Abecedarium for Our Times; Rods and Cones: Seeing from the Back of One’s Head; and Cities, Art and Recovery, a major two-year international initiative focused on art and culture in the aftermath of catastrophe. Subramaniam was also the founding and executive editor of Connect: art.politics.theory.practice, an interdisciplinary art journal published by Arts International. She has a PhD in Performance Studies and a master’s degree in Anthropology.