What is a substitute teacher? Typically, it is a person who fills in for the regular teacher when he or she is unavailable because of illness or vacation or other personal reasons. For our purposes, a substitute teacher is any being, situation, or object that has the potential to impart knowledge.

The exhibition and its related public programs act as an alternative syllabus for art-life learning. The installed artworks, the participating artists, the curators, the exhibition, and the institution can all be considered “substitute teachers” that encourage visitors to assess and challenge their own wealth of knowledge while embarking on new journeys of discovery.

As an exhibition, Substitute Teacher examines reversals of authority and alternative forms of understanding, experience, and curiosity. It acknowledges traditional subjects of study as well as the slippage of one discipline into another. Informed by the structures of the classroom and other potential sites of learning (nature, city streets, places of worship, the internet, the home), Substitute Teacher brings together works in diverse media that become surrogate instructors. These works offer educational opportunities while challenging conditions of categorization, officialdom, and believability.

Artists in the exhibition include:
Lisa Anne Auerbach, Daniel Bozhkov, Luis Camnitzer, Brody Condon, Brian Dettmer, Andrea Fraser, Nina Katchadourian, Glenn Ligon, Larry Miller, Jenny Perlin, Walid Raad/The Atlas Group, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Pedro Reyes, Danielle Roney, Jay Rosenblatt, Mira Schor, Michael Smith, Joe Sola, Javier Téllez, David Wojnarowicz

View the exhibition brochure: Exhibition BrochureView the complete list of works in the exhibition: Exhibition Checklist