Civic Views A Forum

Installation view of Whitney Biennial 2026 (Whitney Museum of American Art, March 8–August 2026). Emilio Martínez Poppe, Philadelphia Housing Authority, South, 2024. Photograph by Gus Powell

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Join us for an afternoon of conversations and music inspired by Emilio Martinez Poppe’s Civic Views (2021–2025), currently on view as part of 2026 Whitney Biennial, The program anticipates the upcoming publication of Civic Views: A Reader (Mural Arts Philadelphia and Inventory Press), which explores the historic struggles and radical potentials of the public sector through the lens of artistic interventions.

This forum brings together six of the interdisciplinary scholars, labor organizers, and artists included in Civic Views: A Reader. With expertise ranging from the aesthetics of resistance to union organizing in Philadelphia, these practitioners consider the current working conditions of municipal employees alongside methods for socially-engaged artistic practice amidst rising authoritarianism and mass privatization. Riffing on the conversations and on their own expertise as city workers, the Philadelphia Municipal Employee Choral Ensemble performs throughout the event. The audience is invited to ask questions and chime into the discussion.

Emilio Martinez Poppe is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist. His current work explores the potentials of cultural organizing within the public sector as in his public art project “Civic Views” in Philadelphia and his role managing the Public Artists in Residence program in New York. Recent exhibitions and commissions include the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of the City of New York, Queens Museum, Abrons Art Center, and Mural Arts Philadelphia.

Shannon Mattern is the Director of Creative Research at the Metropolitan New York Library Council. Previously, she held full professorships in media studies, anthropology, and art history at The New School and the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching focus on media architectures, information infrastructures, and urban technologies. She was the 2025 Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress.

Jameson Paige is a curator and writer based in Philadelphia and New York. He is interested in contemporary art’s engagement with spatial politics, history, negotiations of identity, and problems of representation. His work with artists has manifested as interdisciplinary projects in public space, programming initiatives, publications, and exhibitions. He is c