Past Events

Is AI the End of Creativity—Or a New Beginning? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

Is AI the End of Creativity—Or a New Beginning?

In 1951, Alan Turing, the father of computer science, predicted that “at some stage… we should have to expect the machines to take control.” As artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT promise to revolutionize the way we think and work—and futurists talk of the technology as a next step in human evolution—“some stage” appears to be now.

For creative workers, the question …

How Should Arts Institutions Navigate the Culture Wars? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

How Should Arts Institutions Navigate the Culture Wars?

Polarization has engulfed arts organizations—like every other institution in 21st-century American and European life. But rather than finding themselves pulled apart by political parties doing battle, museums, performing arts companies, and other cultural cornerstones often face other conflicting demands, positioned between their aging donors and overwhelmingly white audience-bases on one side and younger, more diverse artists and new audiences on …

Must Artists Be Activists? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

Must Artists Be Activists?

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work,” a friend told Toni Morrison in a fraught political moment, “not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!” Is this true of every artist, and must it be the case all the time? Great art and true democracies are built on freedom of expression—but when …

How Does a Community Move With Music? A Diaspora Dance Party | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles | In-Person

How Does a Community Move With Music? A Diaspora Dance Party

With generous support from Atom Tickets

In Los Angeles, communities mix and mingle, collide and compound—and songs hold the DNA of their cultural traditions. Earmarked (so to say) for weddings, birthdays, and holiday celebrations, recycled and remixed for newer generations, a community’s playlists include artists that sing across decades and borders, synthesizing new Angeleno culture in unexpected ways. Stitched together, they …

How Does Confronting Our History Build a Better Future? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
Los Angeles In-Person | Streaming Online

How Does Confronting Our History Build a Better Future?

Recent attempts to confront difficult history have exposed major divisions over memory in the United States. But scholars, social justice activists, and many others argue that grappling with the sins of the past, and the ways they reverberate into the present, is a necessary foundation for reimagining the future. Museums are finding new ways to collaborate with communities on projects …

Sacramento In-Person | Streaming Online

What Is A Good Job Now? For Fairness In the Workplace

The state of California has some of the nation’s strongest legal protections for workers. But Californians continue to suffer from various forms of abuse by their employers—from unpaid overtime to dangerous working conditions; from wage theft to racial, ethnic, gender discrimination. What are the biggest challenges for agencies and communities as they seek to turn pro-labor legislation into better workplace …