The Courage to Be: Jeanne van Heeswijk

By Bethany Zulick

On April 27^th, Jeanne van Heeswijk gave the keynote address for the third and final installment of our spring 2015 “The Courage to Be” dinner/lecture series.

Jeanne van Heeswijk is a curator and visual artist who collaborates with people all over the world to create socially engaged art. For one of her projects, Two Up Two Down, van Heeswijk banded together with residents of the Anfield and Breckfield neighborhoods in Liverpool to reclaim derelict buildings and transform them into thriving neighborhoods replete with affordable housing, a community bakery, and meeting places for the community. She is the recipient of numerous awards; most recently, the Center for Curatorial Studies and the Human Rights program at Bard College named her the first Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism.

Van Heeswijk’s address on April 27th included an exhibition of several of her projects and an explanation of the relationship she sees between aesthetics and ethics. She spoke eloquently about how she encourages an honest expression of unique ideas in her works, not to mention the passion with which she invites others to do the same. In this way, she aims to bring about meaningful and candid dialogue.

You can watch a video of Van Heeswijk’s address below:

The Courage to Be - Jeanne van Heeswijk from Hannah Arendt Center on Vimeo.

I had the privilege to ask van Heeswijk some questions about the relationship between courage and artistic creation after the event. You can view her responses here:

An Interview with Jeanne van Heeswijk from Hannah Arendt Center on Vimeo.

Click here to view more videos related to our Courage to Be series.

You can also read synopses of our first two dinners this spring featuring Eyal Press and Uday Mehta by clicking here and here, respectively.