Presenters

Max Frieder, Ed.D., is the Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of the international community-based public arts education organization Artolution. He is a public artist and community arts educator from Denver, Colorado who is based out of Brooklyn, New York. His work ranges from community building in refugee camps, art education in emergencies, hospital workshops, abuse and addiction support through art, resilience building, social cohesion and conflict resolution. He is a trans-disciplinary artist, sculptor, puppeteer, teacher, researcher and facilitates collaborative mural programs that address critical local issues with children, youth and families. He has worked with hundreds of communities in different contexts across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Europe, North America and Asia. He created the “Foundstrument Soundstrument Project”, building large-scale interactive percussive sculptures out of trash and recycled materials around the world. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with honors and a degree in Painting and received his Master of Education in “Community Arts” in Art and Art Education from the Teachers College, Columbia University where he published a five-year body of research through his Doctor of Education titled “ The Rohingya Artolution: Teaching Locally Led Community-based Public Art Educators in the Largest Refugee Camp in History”.

His projects have taken him from Syrian, South Sudanese, Palestinian, and Greek refugee camps to conflict zones, traumatized communities, and across borders to over 26 countries globally. He has received recognition from the New York Times, CBS, NBC, Forbes and the Associated Press. He planted the seed for the first ongoing public arts program for Rohingya artists in the largest refugee camp in the world, in Bangladesh on the border of Myanmar. He is a published author contributing to “Art Making with Refugees and Survivors: Transformative Responses to Trauma after Natural Disasters, War and Other Crises”, as well as publishing with Global Citizen. For his global work, he was awarded the International Crisis Award from UNICEF and the World of Children. He has curated retrospective exhibitions of Global Refugee Art Works in the World Trade Center, UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, COP27, and the UNHCR Headquarters in Geneva. His ranging work focuses on cultivating ongoing programs by educating local artists globally on how to transform communities through public engagement, creative facilitation and inspired participation as the next phase in the history of the arts.

Pamela Lawton was born into a family of artists, writers, dancers, singers, actors, and musicians. As a fifth-generation educator from Washington, DC, she spent much of her formative years engaged in the arts with her grandmother, great uncles and aunts, cousins, parents, and siblings as a form of learning about the world and how to survive and thrive as a woman of color. These intergenerational arts-based lessons stayed with her. 

Her scholarly and artistic research revolves around visual narrative and intergenerational arts learning in community settings with specific emphasis on BIPOC communities. As an artist-educator-researcher, Lawton’s artwork is grounded in social practice, seeking to illuminate contemporary issues, cultural traditions, and the stories of people impacted by them. She earned a BA degree in Studio Art and Sociology from the University of Virginia, an MFA in Printmaking from Howard University and attended Teachers College, Columbia University where she obtained her EdDCTA (Doctor of Education in the College Teaching of Art). In 2021 Pam received the The Pearl Greenberg Award for Teaching and Research in Lifelong Learning from the National Art Education Association.  

Megan Laverty received her Master of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Melbourne and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of New South Wales. She taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Melbourne before starting as Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations at Montclair State University (MSU) in 2000. Megan Laverty arrived at Teachers College in 2005.

Megan Laverty's primary research interests are the history of philosophy of education, moral philosophy and its significance for education, and pre-college philosophy of education. She is co-editor with Professor David T. Hansen of the five-volume reference series, A History of Western Philosophy of Education (Bloomsbury, 2021). Together with Maughn Rollins Gregory, she edits the Philosophy for Children Founders Series (Routledge). She and Rene V. Arcilla edit the Philosophies of Education in Art, Cinema, and Literature (Bloomsbury).

Anna Kornbluh's research and teaching interests center on the novel, film, and cultural aesthetics in theoretical perspective, including formalist, marxist, and psychoanalytic approaches.  She is the author of Immediacy, Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso 2024), The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (University of Chicago 2019),  Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club (Bloomsbury "Film Theory in Practice” series, 2019), and Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form (Fordham UP 2014).  Essays on climate aesthetics, tv, academic labor, and psychoanalysis have appeared in venues like The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, Diacritics, Differences, and Portable Gray.  She is a member of the UIC United Faculty bargaining team and the editorial boards of Novel, Mediations, Genre, and Parapraxis, as well as the founding facilitator of InterCcECT (The Inter Chicago Circle for Experimental Critical Theory), and a partner in Humanitiesworks.org.

Dr. Judith M. Burton is Professor and Director of Art & Art Education at Columbia University Teachers College. Before that she was Chair of Art Education at Boston University and taught at the Massachusetts College of Art. Burton received her Ed. D. from Harvard University in 1980. Her research focuses on the artistic-aesthetic development of children, adolescents and young adults and the implications this has for teaching and learning and the culture in general. In 1995 she co-founded the Center for Research in Arts Education at Teachers College, and in 1996 founded the Heritage School – a comprehensive high school featuring the arts – located in Harlem, NYC. Her book Conversations in Art: The Dialectics of Teaching and Learning co-edited with Dr. Mary Hafeli was published in 2012. She is author of numerous articles and chapters and currently has two books in process of publication. She received the Manuel Barkan Award for excellence in research writing, the Lowenfeld Award for lifetime achievement in art education from NAEA and the Ziegfeld Award for services to international art education from INSEA. Dr, Burton is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in Great Britain, a Distinguished Fellow of the NAEA, and serves as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, and the South China Normal University, Guangzhou.  She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Beaconhouse University, Lahore, Pakistan. She is a trustee of the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD, USA and a former trustee of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, USA. She is the NAEA Eisner Lifetime Achievement honoree for 2015, in recognition of her services to the profession both nationally and globally.

Dr. Lisa Hochtritt is Visiting Associate Professor of Art & Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Before joining TC, she was Director of the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. And prior to this, she was Associate Professor (tenured) in the Art and Visual Culture Education program at The University of Arizona in Tucson​; Chair of Art Education at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design in Denver​; and Assistant Professor and Director, MAT Program, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Hochtritt received her Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University and her M.A. in Creativity and Arts Education from San Francisco State University, and her teaching credential in Art (PK-12) from the State of California.

She has presented her work in state, national, and international conferences and she is the co-editor of Cultivating Critical Conversations in Art Education: Honoring Student Voice, Identity, and Agency, Teachers College Press (2024); Makers, Crafters, Educators: Working for Cultural Change, Routledge (2019); and Art and Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons, Routledge (2012).

Hochtritt has received awards for her teaching and service including the Maryland Art Education Association Higher Education Art Educator of the Year (2023); National Art Education Association (NAEA) Higher Education Art Educator of the Year (2021); Kathy Connors Teaching Award, NAEA Women’s Caucus (2019); NAEA Higher Education Art Educator of the Year, Pacific Region (2014); Colorado Art Education Association Art Educator of the Year (2011); and Faculty of the Year, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005).

Nicole Johnson is a  visual artist and art educator from Kingston, Jamaica. She has taught and mentored collegiate art education students in her home city and in the United States. Nicole completed her Ed.D in art education at Teachers College, Columbia University where she is currently a Full Time Lecturer in Art and Art Education. Prior to this, she worked as an art education program chair in her home city. Her visual arts practice is grounded in drawing and painting, and explores concepts of tension, iteration, identity, and (re)presentation/perception, particularly through the lens of "Black woman-ness”. Her research interests include art educators’ development and reiteration of their professional identities and pedagogical practices, art educators of color’s racialized professional experiences, and decolonizing art curriculum and pedagogy. 

Rebecca Taylor FRSA is an educator, researcher, and strategist with more than two decades of experience in the arts & culture sector, including leadership roles at MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA); The J. Paul Getty Trust; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA); and beyond. She uses her extensive experience to advise clients — including museums, galleries, art fairs, and luxury brands — on major strategic issues.

Rebecca is a Lecturer in the Arts Administration (ARAD) Master's Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the ‘Contemporary Art Business Program’ at CHRISTIE’S, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. Rebecca also taught contemporary art history at UCLA Extension, and was a contributing writer to Khan Academy’s SmartHistory (Contemporary Art) and the Huffington Post (Arts) when each platform was launching. In addition, Rebecca is currently pursuing doctoral studies in 'Art Education' at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she is building on recent findings about the role the arts can play in supporting flourishing to research new pedagogies that engage aesthetic experience in the service of personal growth and self-development.

Rebecca sits on ARTTABLE's Strategic Impact Committee and participates in numerous professional societies (ICOM, AERA NYCMER, FLAME, John Dewey Society, Philosophy of Education Society). She is also a member of the Technical Working Group for the National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab on Arts, Health, and Social/Emotional Well-Being, which is a collaboration between the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I am a doctoral candidate in the Art & Art Education Program and a Macy Fellow and Gallery Coordinator for the Macy Art Gallery, also at TC.
I research ways that artists activate and are activated by the materials they work with. I am currently focused on moments of material resistance that can become generative opportunities, prompting imaginative thinking. My research aims to inform teaching practices that can support material responsiveness as part of an artistic practice.
I have been invited to present papers and workshops, internationally, on my work.
In addition to my own research, I am an adjunct lecturer at Queens College, CUNY, where I teach a graduate research seminar.