Impact as Medium.

With Dan Colen (artist, founder of Sky High Farm, Sky High Biennial, and GIFT Center)
& Liz Munsell (Vice President of Curatorial and Arts Programs at Powerhouse Arts, curator of the next Sky High Biennial, and Co-founder of Museums Moving Forward)

As part of the fair’s programming, Sky High Goods and On present Impact as Medium—a panel discussion featuring artist Dan Colen (founder of Sky High Farm, Sky High Biennial, and GIFT Center) and Liz Munsell (Vice President of Curatorial and Arts Programs at Powerhouse Arts, curator of the next Sky High Biennial, and Co-founder of Museums Moving Forward).

The talk considers Colen’s practice as an artist whose work unfolds across a wide spectrum of contexts—from the studio and into the realm of collectively built, public organizations. These myriad arms of creation are intertwined: the farm and the realities of food insecurity it confronts filter into his paintings and installations. In turn, his participation in the commercial and institutional art world is leveraged into organizations that offer tangible resources and opportunities for “real people” beyond the art world. However meaningful, it’s important to Colen that his art is not beholden to measurable impacts alone—whether via a painting or non-profit, the outcome is reimagining fraught systems and opening up to possibilities. Through fusions of materialities, expertises, disciplines, and dreams, Colen helps make manifest new models and atmospheres where the reality of the status quo seems more absurd than the thing we could build together.

In one of the most recent extensions of his practice, Colen organized the 2025 Sky High Biennial in rural New York—a curatorial effort that was guided by the expansive work of Sky High Farm. Sixty artists presented ambitiously scaled projects and intimate works as part of a community that came together to exhibit outside of any art world center or interest, and to raise funds in support of the farm’s urgent mission. This conversation provides the first public window into Colen’s work with Munsell toward the next Sky High Biennial, hosted at the newly formed GIFT Center and co-produced with Sky High Goods.
Talk in English.