Look at Art. Get Paid. (2015-2020)

socially engaged art project

collaboration with Josephine Devanbu

RISD Museum

Look at Art. Get Paid. (LAAGP) is a socially engaged art project that pays people who don’t visit art museums to visit one as guest critics of the art and its institution. LAAGP launched at the RISD Museum in 2016. We recruited critics through advertisements in public transit; 200+ people responded, and 41 people were invited as guest critics, with priority given to BIPOC, working class folks, and people with disabilities.

LAAGP addresses the fact that, while museums receive public money to serve the public, 90% of core museum goers are white. Reframing museums attendance as labor, LAAGP reverses the relationship between the paying and the paid, the educator and the educated. Critics offered powerful accounts of what the museum looked and felt like for a newcomer, commenting on the presence of security in the Museum, the lack of advertising in their neighborhoods, the cryptic signage of the Museum. LAAGP critiques led to changes in the Museum’s policies on acquisition, advertisement, signage, translation, and more.

The model of LAAGP has been adapted by several institutions, including the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst (2021), Toledo Opera (2020-present) and Montclair State University Galleries (2023).