No Longer Empty

Teens Curate Teens

Teens Curate Teens (TCT) is an educational and hands on curatorial experience for high school students to develop their curatorial and collaborative skills. TCT provides young and aspiring artists in high school with the opportunity to exhibit their work in a professional venue and trains young art participants in high school in curatorial and writing skills. Both, student artists and student curators exhibit confidence in their artistic and analytic practice and will to grow personally and professionally beyond the school setting. 

Program Goals

1) Students achieve academic and artistic success.

2) Students exhibit leadership skills.

3) Through art, students think critically and raise issues affecting youth in New York City. 

Past editions include Old Bronx Court House (2015); Sugar Hill (2014); Queens (2013).

This program was originally developed in partnership between No Longer Empty (NLE) and ArtsConnection's programs, High 5 Teens Reviewers and Critics (TRAC) and Students Arts Program (SAP). 

The first edition of TCT took place in from Fall 2013 to Spring 2013 in alongside No Longer Empty´s major exhibition in a vacated old bank building Long Island City, Queens. Among 80 artwork submissions, 20 works were selected by 6 student curators. The exhibition, titled “Specie”, offered youth´s take on the current economic climate. Public programs took place that included a conversation between participants and a spoken word afternoon. Other successes included art works being sold, two student artists receiving scholarships for The New School´s Parsons School of Design and FIT and one curator pursuing Art History Studies in Yale. An article on Queens newspaper Metrofocus featured the program