Beer Talk Series
The Beer Talk Series will extend throughout the week of Greater Fort Lauderdale Beer Week and is a great opportunity to learn about the local beer scene and the brewing process. It will feature a week-long series of discussions about the past, present and future of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Beer scene. 
TUESDAY JANUARY 22
LOCATION: Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina
ADDRESS: 2301 SE 17th St, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316
TIME: 2:00PM - 3:00PM
THE 1000 MERMAIDS PROJECT
​The #1000mermaids project is a public art installation that will also serve as an underwater eco-friendly destination for tourism.  Every year tourists come to Ft. Lauderdale to enjoy the natural resources. Large volumes of visitor traffic can have negative impacts on the health of the natural reef. Artificial reefs can help offset the traffic giving the natural reefs time to recover, as well as provide habitats for fish, lobsters, and other marine life. 

The #1000mermaids project aims to bring awareness to the growing problems affecting our natural reefs. The first step for helping our environment is by educating ourselves on issues we may not be aware of on the surface but are happening underneath the water.

​Mermaids have long been a symbol of humans’ connection to the Ocean. Our plan is to cast real people and sculpt them into artificial reef sculptures that will be strategically placed along the ocean floor with the help of local government environmental agencies. The planned locations for the Artificial reef modules are perpendicular with the tour boat excursions off Fort Lauderdale beach. While on the excursions guests will be educated on reef preservation and also be presented the opportunity to help the cause.
THURSDAY JANUARY 24
LOCATION: Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina
ADDRESS: 2301 SE 17th St
TIME: 5:30PM - 7:00PM
ART AND THE ARTPRNR
A dialogue about social media and how it is changing the world of fine arts. Highlights include; the importance of Instagram, the importance of staying relevant online, the effect of influencers, and how social media overall is changing the landscape of fine arts.
THURSDAY JANUARY 24
LOCATION: Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina
ADDRESS: 2301 SE 17th St
TIME: 5:30PM - 7:00PM
GIRL NOTICED
Pratico began her artistic career at 19 as a self-taught billboard artist in Philadelphia. Her work focuses mainly on the portrait and has a strong activist element. Her murals and custom finishes adorn countless private homes and many businesses, including The Whole Enchilada, The Wilder, GreenBar and Kitchen, SoHo Hotel and Spa and The Dream Hotel in South Beach. In 2015, Pratico launched a nationwide mural project called “Girl Noticed.” In its inaugural year, Hoffman’s Chocolates chose the project to be part of its ArtBar campaign along with acclaimed artists Guy Harvey and Clyde Butcher. The artwork and message have garnered the attention of news stations in Florida, Ohio, New York, Virginia, Nebraska and Alaska. This Arts Mean Business event is hosted by Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina in partnership with Art Fort Lauderdale Art Fair sponsored by Jim and Dole McCormick.
FRIDAY JANUARY 25
LETS TALK ART
​Since graduation, Monroe has become a well-known talent in painting traditional canvas, photography, digital art, film, murals, and customized sneakers. Van's artwork was nationally recognized and added to the Smithsonian Museum's collection and also featured in the Manifest Hope Gallery. Monroe has traveled to Africa to teach painting techniques to students at Academie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, DRC. He has created artwork for President Barack Obama, Valerie Trierweiler, Spike Lee, Afeni Shakur, Will.I.Am, Hill Harper, Queen Latifah, Nicki Minaj, Ray Romano, DJ Tiesto, Jennifer Lopez, Carmelo and LaLa Anthony, Josh Hutcherson and countless other celebrities. Van has worked with 20th Century Fox in promoting their summer blockbuster movies Wolverine and Ice Age 4 with his sneaker designs. Monroe’s adept leadership ability was celebrated by his community through his induction into Cleveland's prestigious 40-40 club. Through the richness of his life experiences and artistry, Van has devoted his existence to walking in his purpose and encouraging people throughout the world to pursue the dreams that are hidden within their hearts.
LOCATION: Midtown Commerce Center
ADDRESS: 1033 NW 6th St #206
TIME: 4:00PM - 6:00PM
FRIDAY JANUARY 25
LOCATION: Florida Atlantic University MetroLab
ADDRESS: 220 SE 2nd Ave
TIME: 6:00PM - 8:00PM
WHEN THE ARTIST SPEAKS THE ARCHITECTURE LISTENS
​During the renaissance period, some of the most successful artists spent time visualizing the future as well as capturing the zeitgeist. One of the most critical evolutions currently going on is the separation of state and money - in the form of cryptocurrencies. What will our societies look like once the 3.9 billion people, currently not participating in the banking system, get to come online and start trading? VESA’s talk touches on the crossroads of art, Bitcoin, AI, Global internet, and how art can serve to help prioritize our efforts for a thriving future.
SATURDAY JANUARY 26
LOCATION: Museum of Discovery & Science
ADDRESS: 401 SW 2nd St
TIME: 10:00AM - 12:00PM
THE MERGER OF ART AND CRYPTO CURRENCY
During the renaissance period, some of the most successful artists spent time visualizing the future as well as capturing the zeitgeist. One of the most critical evolutions currently going on is the separation of state and money - in the form of cryptocurrencies. What will our societies look like once the 3.9 billion people, currently not participating in the banking system, get to come online and start trading? VESA’s talk touches on the crossroads of art, Bitcoin, AI, Global internet, and how art can serve to help prioritize our efforts for a thriving future.
SATURDAY JANUARY 26
LOCATION: NSU Art Museum (Horvitz Auditorium)
ADDRESS: 1 E Las Olas Blvd
TIME: 12:00PM - 1:00PM
STRENGTHENING BROWARD COUNTY THROUGH THE ARTS
​Arts and culture are big business in Fort Lauderdale and a major tourism product that moves attendees from community-to-community and across state lines. Arts visitors spend more, stay longer, and are more likely to shop. When we support the arts, we do more than enhance our quality of life. We are also improving our communities economically, socially, and educationally. Join national arts leader, Randy Cohen of Americans for the Arts, for a fun and inspiring session about building healthier communities through the arts—supporting jobs and generating tourism, improving education, and unifying communities.
SATURDAY JANUARY 26
LOCATION: Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina
ADDRESS: 2301 SE 17th St
TIME: 2:30PM - 3:30PM
E*race: THE EFFECT OF SEPARATING RACE FROM JUSTICE & EQUALITY
​Join us for a powerful, critical discussion as we explore the role and importance of the Artist Activist. In his series, “Red Line,” artist Omari Booker explores how division based on race has affected every aspect of society in the United States from health to housing, and how the historic practice of redlining and racial discrimination has impacted marginalized communities throughout Nashville and across our nation. Art is often an access point. Connecting us despite of, and because of, our differences. Engaging even the most critical among us. Allowing us to explore our humanity through the eyes of others. Throughout the ages, artists have used canvas to create social and political change. Artists have used prose to record memories, resist oppression and inspire revolutions. Artists have danced for freedom and awakened us to the realities of injustice. There is redemptive power in the voice of the artist. While the practice of redlining has been banned for the last 50 years, its adverse effect on communities of color is still being felt throughout our nation. Redlining, which was introduced in 1934 by the creation of the Federal Housing Administration, is defined as process of drawing red lines around neighborhoods lenders refuse to make loans or make loans on less favorable terms. The practice, which was outlawed in 1968 by the Fair Housing Act, caused many people of color who lived in redlined neighborhoods to be swept into generational cycles of poverty.
​
Moderated By: Chevara Orrin - award-winning diversity & inclusion strategist, social entrepreneur, published author, social justice activist, independent filmmaker and dynamic public speaker.
SATURDAY JANUARY 26
LOCATION: Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina
ADDRESS: 2301 SE 17th St
TIME: ​4:00PM - 5:00PM
ARTIST AS ADVOCATE
Laura Marsh is a textile artist with a social practice. She defines installations for viewer participation at institutions. Her caves, flags, and weavings contain social mottos. Marsh believes that immersive environments are needed in academic cultures to reflect upon a world that is becoming increasingly moderated by technology and social media competition. From two generations of sewers, she practices a do-it-yourself approach that is accessible and hands-on. Over the past decade, Marsh has watched her hometown of Montrose, Pennsylvania transform into a fracking region. She has relocated several times, and her installations reflect the artist's experience with relocation. Her desire to define spaces that are place makers for others is a direct reaction to gentrification and class issues that force artists to fragment their lives and become nomadic. Marsh regards her practice as multilayered and transformative, and she supports the activation of uncommon sites. Marsh received her MFA from Yale University School of Art and a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Marsh has exhibited nationally at venues including Dimensions Variable, Miami, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Printed Matter, Field Projects, Newman Popiashvili Gallery, and Tilton Gallery in NY. She is a current artist in residence at ArtCenter South Florida in Miami Beach and the Curator of Exhibitions at the Art and Culture Center in Hollywood, FL.
SATURDAY JANUARY 26
LOCATION: Stonewall Museum & Archives
ADDRESS: 2157 Wilton Dr., Wilton Manors
TIME: 6:30PM - 7:30PM
QUEER CONTEMPORARY ART AND COMMUNITY 50 YEARS AFTER STONEWALL
​Learn about the thriving queer art community that has found a home in Brooklyn, where Lauren uses her position as a curator, cultural producer and DJ to amplify LGBTQ+ artistic production and create spaces that affirm queer community and expression. Lauren shares about the curatorial projects she organizes that center the diverse experiences of queer communities in Brooklyn and beyond today--with an emphasis on the project she is currently co-curating for the Brooklyn Museum entitled Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall. The exhibition spotlights artists born after 1969 in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which was a multiday rebellion ignited by a routine raid on an a New York City gay bar that has become widely regarded as the catalyst for the modern gay rights movement. The exhibition explores the profound legacy of this moment of protest in contemporary art and visual culture and grapples with how we will care for generations of LGBTQ+ people to come.
SATURDAY JANUARY 26
LOCATION: Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina
ADDRESS: 2301 SE 17th St
TIME: 5:30PM - 6:30PM
THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC ART & WHY YOU SHOULD SUPPORT IT
​Artist and curator Jill C. Weisberg will present the evolution of murals and street art in South Florida. She will detail how public art is conceptualized and the unique challenges faced by artists during development and execution. Finally, Weisberg will elaborate on the importance of public art in Broward County and what you can do to support it. Hollywood native and visual thinker Jill C. Weisberg got her start in public art in 2008 as a designer and project manager working with an arts collective that helped make Miami’s Wynwood arts district one of the largest concentrations of international street art in the world. Weisberg has curated the Downtown Hollywood Mural Project since its inception in 2012 and has been instrumental in cultivating Downtown Hollywood as an arts hub. She is responsible for scouting diverse talent, locally, nationally and internationally and bringing professional experienced artists to South Florida. Weisberg has approached the curation of DHMP with the flair of a contemporary and global steward. She selects contemporary artists working with a wide range of subject matter, styles and themes that flow seamlessly into the historic Downtown architecture. An artist herself, Weisberg has shown her fine art across the United States and is an accomplished graphic designer, art director, and curator. Her fine art practice consists of thought-provoking 2-dimensional work and murals with a feminist edge. A background both in design and fine art has influenced her to create work that uses both parts of her experience in those fields. Recently, Weisberg and her partner opened Storefront Art Studio in Downtown Hollywood which is their own painting studio and exhibition space.
SUNDAY JANUARY 27
LOCATION: NSU Art Museum (Horvitz Auditorium)
ADDRESS: 1 E Las Olas Blvd
TIME: 1:00PM -2:00PM
RIGOR AND VISION IN THE ART WORLD
This talk will explore the process of aligning recent scholarship on black art in the '60s and '70s with the practical concerns of the museum to mount "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Art of Black Power" and the recently opened "Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room." Ashley James is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Here she curated the Brooklyn Museum presentation of Soul of a Nation and is curating the forthcoming exhibition, Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room. Prior to this position she worked in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, where she was a Mellon Research Consortium fellow assisting on the 2018 Charles White and Adrian Piper retrospectives. James is a PhD candidate in the Departments of African American Studies, English Literature, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. She holds an MA and MPhil in English Literature and an MA and MPhil in African American Studies from Yale. At Yale, she co-curated the 2014 University Art Gallery exhibition Odd Volumes: Book Art from the Allan Chasanoff Collection. She writes broadly on modern and contemporary literary and visual arts practices, and her dissertation reconsiders the relationship between politics, art, and Blackness in the late 1960s/early 1970s. She was also listed as top young Curators to watch for 2018 by CULTURED Magazine.
SUNDAY JANUARY 27
LOCATION: NSU Art Museum (Horvitz Auditorium)
ADDRESS: 1 E Las Olas Blvd
TIME: 2:30PM -3:30PM
A.I. & ART WITH OBVIOUS
The three members of Obvious will be here to present their story, which started in a small apartment in Paris, and led them to an auction house at Christie’s NY. They will explain the artificial intelligence technologies they work with. They will introduce a new creation process, that is characterized by interactions between human and machine, and that changes the very place of the artist as we know him, in this creation process. They will also talk about the parallel between machine and human inventiveness, and explore the hints that machine learning technologies can provide regarding our own creativity. Finally, the three members of the collective made of artists and AI researchers, will try to provide an overview as to how the art market can evolve in reaction to new technologies, and how they plan on actively participating in research and artistic creation within this emerging market.