Public Works in Conversation: Karyn Olivier, Cauleen Smith, and Anthony Elms

Join us to hear Philadelphia artist Karyn Olivier in conversation with filmmaker Cauleen Smith and curator Anthony Elms, as they discuss free speech, artistic and liberated knowledge, and Olivier’s upcoming installation for the Public Works program.

In December 2026, Olivier will unveil Sit With It, a site-specific sculpture and video projection constructed from historically-banned books throughout history, coming soon to the lobby of the Parkway Central Library. To create this work, Olivier spent more than a year embedded with the Free Library of Philadelphia, meeting with a range of staff from all over the library system’s 50+ branches.

Go behind the scenes of Olivier’s creative process at this dynamic artist talk, the first of several programs engaging the public with Olivier’s residency. Created in partnership with Forman Arts Initiative (FAI), Public Works is a residency program that places artists in Philadelphia government agencies or organizations to develop artwork that forges new connections between the agencies’ work and the communities they serve.

About the artist-in-residence

Karyn Olivier is a Trinidadian-born, Brooklyn-raised artist whose practice spans sculpture, large-scale installation, and public art. She is currently serving as the Public Works Artist in Residence at the Free Library of Philadelphia and is currently presenting a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Her recent projects include a 2026 memorial dedicated to civil rights icon Vel R. Phillips. Her work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial, the Malta Biennale, and the Prospect.6 Triennial. In 2024, she completed Right Here, a memorial at Stenton House, and a year-long commission at Rice University. Her recent history includes exhibitions at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Documenta 15, and a permanent installation for Newark Liberty International Airport.

Olivier has showcased her work internationally at the Gwangju and Busan biennials and the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture. Her art has been presented at prestigious institutions such as The Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA P.S.1, and the ICA Watershed in Boston. Notable solo exhibitions include Everything That’s Alive Moves at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and a major project at Laumeier Sculpture Park.

About the panelists

Cauleen Smith (born 1967) was raised in Sacramento and now lives and works in Los Angeles, as faculty in the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture. Smith holds a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television. Smith has had solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, MassMoCA and LACMA. Smith is the recipient of the following awards: Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Creative Capital Film / Video, Chicago 3Arts Grant, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chicago Expo Artadia Award, and Rauschenberg Residency, Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts in Film and Video 2016, United States Artists Award 2017, 2016 inaugural recipient of the Ellsworth Kelly Award, 2020 recipient of the Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Anthony Elms is Artistic Director at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh. Recently he organized Rodney McMillian: Neighbors for the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Wa, and the TD Bank Curated Spotlight for New Art Dealers Association, New York. Formerly of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, he organized the exhibitions Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal (with Ars Nova Workshop) (2021), Karyn Olivier: Everything That’s Alive Moves (2020), Cauleen Smith: Give It or Leave It (2018), Endless Shout (2016–17), Rodney McMillian: The Black Show (2016), Christopher Knowles: In a Word with writer Hilton Als (2015), White Petals Surround Your Yellow Heart (2013), among others. Elms’s writings have appeared in many catalogues and edited collections, as well as various periodicals. He has independently curated many exhibitions, including Whitney Biennial 2014; Interstellar Low Ways (with Huey Copeland); A Unicorn Basking in the Light of Three Glowing Suns (with Philip von Zweck); and Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954–68 (with John Corbett and Terri Kapsalis).