Public Art and Campus Placemaking: Recentering the Artist in Communities of Practice

UCSB Library is pleased to present Kim Yasuda (Art) in the Pacific Views: Library Speaker Series for Winter 2024.Through her own place-based, public research and teaching, and drawing on the UCSB Reads 2024 book, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, Yasuda makes a compelling case for the untapped potential of the arts to enhance innovative campus research and interdivisional exchange among scholars and artists.

Kim Yasuda is an Artist and Professor of Public Practice in the Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara. Yasuda’s creative work and public research investigate the role of art practice, and educational institutions in community development and public life. Her recent projects combine her teaching and research to shape pedagogical experiments at the intersection of disciplinary knowledge production and creative practice. Yasuda has worked with campus faculty, students and staff across Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM to build coalition and cross-sector collaborations that mitigate social and environmental challenges through models of academic stewardship, public participation and mutual aid.