Research Network Chair
Daniel Tucker makes documentaries, publications, classes, exhibitions, and events inspired by his interest in social movements and the people and places from which they emerge. His writings and lectures on the intersections of art and politics and his collaborative art projects have been published and presented widely. His artwork often takes the form of maps, image archives, and video essays and has been exhibited at Commonwealth & Council gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester, NY), Albuquerque Museum (Albuquerque, NM), Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA), Gene Siskel Film Center and Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Art In General and the Park Avenue Armory (New York City, NY), Slought (Philadelphia), Werkleitz Biennial 6 (Germany), Centro José Guerrero (Spain), the 4th Athens Biennale (Greece) as well as streets, protests, front yards, bus tours and rooftops. His recent video essays, Future Perfect (2015) and Local Control (2018) have been focused on critically examining the right-wing imagination.
He recently finished organizing the book and exhibit “Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of Pandemic” (Soberscove, 2022) with Anthony Romero and Dan S. Wang, and numerous other contributors. Several early projects of his were focused around the city of Chicago including "Trashing the Neoliberal City: Autonomous Cultural Practices in Chicago from 2000-2005" co-edited with Emily Forman (2006), the magazine AREA Chicago (2005-2010) and that evolved into his work with Rebecca Zorach on Never The Same - an oral history and archive project about socially-engaged art in Chicago. Since that time he’s been active in art journalism circulating in both independent and academic publishing that has included artist books, exhibition catalogs, monographs, and magazines. Some of those books include "A Guide to Democracy in America" (2008), "Experimental Geography"; (2009), "Notes for a People’s Atlas" (2011), "Immersive Life Practices" (2014), "The Questions We Ask Together" (2015), "Art as Social Practice – A critical investigation of works by Kenneth A. Balfelt" (2015), "Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements" (2016), "Activating Artifacts: About Academia: Muntadas" (2017), "Performing Revolutionary: Nicole Garneau" (2018), "Walls Turned Sideways" (2018) co-authored with Rosten Woo, Fearful Symmetries: Faith Wilding (2019), and The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking (2021) co-authored with Cassie Fennel, and The Routledge Companion to Art and Activism in the Twenty-First Century (2023).
He has an active public programming consultancy and over the last year served as curator-in-residence at Mural Arts Philadelphia, guest curator of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's MFA Thesis exhibit, guest editor of A Blade of Grass magazine, and has done program and conference curating for Creative Time, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, Inclusive Museums, and the National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture.
Tucker has taught previously at Moore College of Art & Design, University of Chicago, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Ox-Bow School of Art. Beginning in the Summer of 2023 he will serve as the Director of the Museum Studies MA program and be an Associate Professor at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Miscprojects.com