The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood is very pleased to announce the dates the 2011-12 “Hot Topics” lecture series, which is funded by a $25,000 Knight Arts Challenge grant. Lectures are scheduled from 5-7 p.m. on select Saturdays.

Hot Topics begins on Sept. 17, 2011 with a talk by Shamim M. Momin to coincide with the Center’s 2011 South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual and Media Arts Fellowship Awards exhibit (Sept. 9 to Oct. 16, 2011). Momin is the Director, Curator, and co-founder of the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), a non-profit public art organization committed to presenting site- and situation-specific contemporary art projects. She is the former contemporary curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and co-curated both the 2008 and 2004 Whitney Biennials. Her most recent projects include the island, an exhibition on Flagler Memorial Island during Art Basel Miami Beach 2010.

Two distinguished Hot Topics speakers will each present talks during Artist Unknown/The Free World, a large-scale exhibition of vernacular and found photography organized by artists John D. Monteith and Oliver Wasow (Oct. 28, 2011 to Jan. 29, 2012). On October 29th, internationally recognized curator and writer Marvin Heiferman will discuss photography in an historical context and as it relates to the trends represented in the Artist Unknown exhibition. Heiferman’s past curatorial projects include John Waters: Change of Life at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Image World at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He will contribute to a book based on Artist Unknown being published by Gean Moreno’s [NAME] Publications.

On Dec. 10, New York Magazine critic Jerry Saltz will present his Hot Topics lecture. Saltz is a three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and a 2011 finalist for the prestigious American Society of Magazine Editors award in the Columns & Commentary category. In 2006 was named “Best Art Critic” by Time Out New York for his work at the Village Voice, where he wrote from 1998-2007. He also is a judge on the Bravo television show Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. Dan Cameron, the Founder and Artistic Director of Prospect New Orleans, speaks on May 12, 2012, during the exhibition Philip Estlund: Subprime/Subtropics (March 23  to May 27, 2012). Cameron has served as Director of Visual Arts for the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans since 2007, following his 11-year tenure as Senior Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.

On July 28, 2012, filmmakers Julie Kahn and Haley Downs will present a film and talk based on their forthcoming documentary Swamp Cabbage: Cracker Culture in a Fast Food Nation. Julie Lara Kahn is a Harvard graduate filmmaker, producer and visual artist currently affiliated with the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Calif. Hayley Downs is a documentary filmmaker, producer and fundraising/outreach consultant based in New York.

For more information on the Hot Topics series as well other information regarding the Center’s programs, please contact Jane Hart the Center’s Curator of Exhibitions at [email protected].