The Joey Skaggs Archive Announces the Release of the Oral History Series

Watch free now!

“Joey Skaggs and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond”
Following successful film festival runs, the first eleven award-winning episodes are now available for free streaming.

Stream on: JoeySkaggs.com, Youtube, and Vimeo.



About the Series
These short documentary oral history films pull back the curtain on Joey Skaggs’ art and life, drawing on six decades of rare archival footage, photographs, press materials, correspondence, and other documents. Continue reading “The Joey Skaggs Archive Announces the Release of the Oral History Series”

Working for Change

Sometimes you need a cloak of invisibility, sometimes you need a coat of armor, and sometimes you just need to go naked! I encourage any attempt to provoke positive change.


Social Malpractice in the Age of Cultural Compliance, by Ed Woodham, Hyperallergic, March 25, 2026.

What happens when the language of social practice becomes a tool of the very systems it once hoped to challenge?

We are living in a strangely apocalyptic moment where a perverse logic runs the machinery of public life while insisting everything is just fine. Around the world, political systems are tightening control over commerce, education, culture, and communication. Independent critical thinking is increasingly treated as subversive rather than a civic virtue. Public space, once the laboratory for egalitarian expression, is shrinking under surveillance, privatization, and corporate branding.

So where does socially engaged art fit into a world progressively hostile to independent thought? Read the whole article here.

Star Power Lights Up the Kennedy Center

Strong voices speak out against Trump’s attack on our freedom of expression.


Artists detonate attack on Trump at the Kennedy Center, by Ashley Murray, Indiana Capital Chronicle, AlterNet, March 28, 2026.

WASHINGTON — A host of celebrities outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday kicked off a weekend of protest against President Donald Trump’s expansion of executive power and his administration’s pressure on freedom of expression — from theater programming in the nation’s capital, to late-night television.

More than a dozen activist performers and creators rallied for Artists United for Our Freedoms, an event organized by the advocacy group Committee for the First Amendment. Read the whole article here.

From the Vault: Joey Skaggs’ 1979 Wall Street Shoe Shine

Dime for a shine? Fuhgeddaboudit!

In 1979, Joey Skaggs, SVA students and friends, make a statement about runaway inflation by charging ten times more than normal for a luxury shoe shine on Wall Street for workers who easily made ten times more than the average person.

Check out the story behind the Wall Street Shoe Shine here.