Local
Global
Cloud

Aaron Levy

Aaron Levy, PhD, MPhil is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Slought. Slought is a twenty-year organizational effort he founded to engage the public in multifaceted dialogue about topical cultural and socio-political issues facing Philadelphia and the world. With an expansive network of university and community collaborators, Dr. Levy has developed and led hundreds of interdisciplinary programs and symposia across the humanities, art and design, social sciences, medicine, and other fields, featuring leading scholars from Philadelphia and beyond. He has also curated over 50 exhibitions and installations with artists and filmmakers such as Carolee Schneemann, Agnes Varda, Werner Herzog, Hermann Nitsch, Peter Greenaway, Susan Meiselas, Arakawa, Camille Henrot, and Devin Allen, among others.

Dr. Levy has lectured extensively, both nationally and internationally, on the power of the expressive arts to transform socio-cultural norms and create openings for change to occur. As a non-profit leader and curator, his work seeks to challenge seemingly intractable socio-political problems and address pervasive inequities and social suffering in Philadelphia and beyond. For more than twenty years, Dr. Levy has also conceived and curated several large-scale projects in both institutional and public settings around the world. These include serving as co-curator of Into the Open (2008-9) for the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for Architecture, which was organized on behalf of the US Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts. This project explored the work of grassroots architects working collaboratively to invigorate community activism and environmental policy, and traveled to Parsons School of Design and the National Constitution Center. He also co-led the Perpetual Peace Project (2010-11), a global peace movement launched in partnership with the International Peace Institute, the United Nations University, and the European Union National Institutes of Culture. This effort included an exhibition at the New Museum and several international events, workshops, symposia, and other programs. Other projects include Mixplace Studio (2009-12), produced with People's Emergency Center and Estudio Teddy Cruz, which was a multi-year summer school and mentorship program for young adults in Philadelphia experiencing hardship. Dr. Levy has also co-organized several large-scale research initiatives and digital archives, including Ai Weiwei's Fairytale Project | 童话项目 | Märchen-Projekt (2011); A People War, a visual archive of the Nepal Conflict (2014); The Right to the Image, with the Syrian anti-war media collective Abounaddara (2015); and Add Oil Machine 打氣機 (2015), an online exhibition about the Hong Kong Umbrella movement. More recently, he organized Photographies of Conflict, a two-year exhibition cycle with artist collectives who use photography to contest dominant narratives of conflicts, and No Mud, No Lotus, a retrospective of Louverture Films exploring how filmmakers, thinkers, and activists can engage and record some of the most devastating and urgent issues of our day (2018-19).

A longtime advocate for the healing potential of the arts and humanities, Dr. Levy is also the Director of the Penn Medicine Listening Lab, Director of the Health Ecologies Lab, and co-Director of Rx/Museum, initiatives that reflect his dedication to new approaches to listening and care. Dr. Levy is a member of the Selection Committee for the Artist Protection Fund, an initiative of the Institute for International Education; has twice served on the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE); and was a United States Cultural Envoy to Pakistan in 2010. From 2015 to 2023, he was on the board of directors of AICA-USA, the International Art Critics Association. Prior to Levy's life in the academy and non-profit sector, he was a poet and visual artist.

Executive Director

Chief Curator

Slought
4017 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
slought.org alevy@sloughtfoundation.org
+1.215.701.4627, Ext. 111

Values

Primary programs
Local
Begins Feb 1, 2019

An initiative elevating stories and histories of the struggle for justice in Philadelphia and beyond

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Begins Nov 13, 2010

A permanent installation that features a rarely heard performance by John Cage, and will evolve over time through participation from the public

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Global
Begins Oct 14, 2019

A storytelling initiative that embraces the power of listening as a form of care

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Begins Jan 18, 2017

A lab focusing on the impact of social systems on the health of individuals and communities

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Sep 1, 2018 – Sep 1, 2020

A cultural exchange initiative engaging a broad network of civic institutions in the former Eastern Bloc and beyond

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Begins Oct 1, 2010

A curatorial intervention exploring 21st century prospects for international peace through a series of symposia, exhibitions, lectures, and films

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Begins Sep 14, 2008

Highlighting America's rich history of architectural experimentation and the original ways architects today are working collaboratively to invigorate community activism and environmental policy

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Cloud
Begins Oct 23, 2015

An online exhibition provoking new thinking about media representation and the contemporary conditions of the Syrian revolution

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Begins Jan 5, 2014

A new identity that radically transforms how Slought operates in Philadelphia, the world, and the cloud, and makes legible the organization's movements as it performs its activities

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Begins Mar 6, 2011

A research initiative and archive about the lives and experiences of 1001 Chinese participants who traveled to Kassel, Germany for Ai Weiwei's project "Fairytale" (2007)

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Begins Aug 27, 2010

A research initiative and publication series exploring the history of the Venice Biennale of Architecture and the relationship between architecture and display

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Begins Mar 7, 2002

Recordings by Fred Wah of readings, lectures and discussions by notable New American poets

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