Zócalo is proud to announce the launch of significant new partnerships with two major global brands: the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. and the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles. Zócalo and the Smithsonian are hosting a new national conversation, “What It Means to Be American.” And Zócalo and the Getty are publishing journalism and presenting live events around Southern California through our new “Open Art” collaboration.

“What It Means to Be American” is a multimedia, multiplatform national conversation that brings together leading thinkers, public figures, and Americans from all walks of life to explore big, visceral questions about how our nation’s past can help us understand its present and imagine its future. Our kick-off event on January 14, “The Women of the West,” will feature former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Anna Maria Chávez, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. “What It Means to Be American” also features an interactive component, which will ask the public to share their American stories in response to questions such as, “What does your family own that belongs in the Smithsonian?” For more on “What It Means to Be American,” we invite you to check out our new website, whatitmeanstobeamerican.org.

“Open Art” explores the role art plays in our lives, our country, and our civic culture through free public events at the Getty and at selected sites around Los Angeles and jointly published journalism. This new collaboration formalizes a longstanding partnership between the Getty and Zócalo Public Square. Since 2008, Zócalo has presented events at the Getty Museum that contextualize museum exhibitions to explore urgent issues that emerge from works of art and to reach broader, more diverse audiences. Now, Zócalo and the Getty will also co-present events around Los Angeles and invite leading artists, writers, curators, and scholars to contribute articles to “Open Art.”

Like everything we publish at zocalopublisquare.org, all of our “What It Means to Be American” and “Open Art” articles will be syndicated to over 160 media outlets around the country. Zócalo articles appear in publications including The Washington Post, Time, Fortune, the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post, Baltimore Sun, and USA Today.

In addition to bolstering our growing reach, these new partnerships serve to advance Zócalo’s mission of translating ideas to broad audiences and connecting people to ideas and to each other. They also mark our transition from a local to a national institution.