Protest Through Visual and Performance Art

Join us for our upcoming virtual series with Executive Director of The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, Libertad O. Guerra, and Vice President and National Design Director at the Smith Group Dayton Schroeter.

Registration is free; advance registration is required

Libertad O. Guerra | Executive Director
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center

Libertad O. Guerra is an urban anthropologist, curator, and cultural organizer / producer with vast arts management experience specializing in startup phase and strategic turnaround of community based cultural organizations with an intersectional approach. She has led the creation of incubation NYC spaces and collectives of Latinx cultural producers and educators. Her academic research / symposia has focused on Puerto Rican, Latinx, and NYC’s social-artistic movements and aesthetic politics of place in im/migrant urban settings. Several of her exhibitions have been featured in Art Net best exhibitions of the year, and listed by the New York Times list of 10 Galleries to Visit Now on the Lower East Side. In 2020 she became the Executive Director of The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Education Center in downtown Manhattan and was recently awarded the Mellon’s Foundation grant for New Director’s Vision among other recognitions. Guerra is also a co-founder of the South Bronx Unite environmental justice coalition, serves as a member of the Mott Haven / Port Morris Community Land Stewards board, and most recently co-founded the Latinx Arts Consortium of New York network of 30 plus arts organizations.

Dayton Schroeter | Vice President and National Design Director
Smith Group

Dayton Schroeter is a Vice President and National Design Director at SmithGroup. He is a social activist, artist, exhibition designer and Architect with over 20 years of experience championing ‘Design Justice’ advocacy throughout his career at SmithGroup. As a leader of the firm’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, his charge is to lead design projects that address the systematic injustice that architecture and planning have perpetuated for historically disenfranchised communities of color. Leveraging his tenacious passion for design justice with authenticity and creativity, he is currently leading Antiracism efforts in design projects including The National Slavery Museum at Lumpkins Slave Jail, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Expansion and Renovation project, A new Master Plan for the Whitney Plantation, and a traveling art exhibition called “All Eyez on Me” which will advance a sweeping social art history of Hip Hop and its myriad expressions across the globe, bringing together poetry, music videos, couture fashion, painting, sculpture, photography, and film by the most innovative cultural producers of the last 50 years.