Planet Word Museum, Washington D.C. (Photo courtesy Local Projects)
Local Projects: Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Designer Lecture
Stephen Baker and Kate Watson of New York-based Local Projects will deliver the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Designer Lecture as part of the Sam Fox School’s Public Lecture Series at WashU.
Local Projects is an exhibition and media design firm for museums and public spaces connecting people to stories through innovative design. They are a woman-led, multi-disciplinary design studio best known for technologically advanced work that drives emotional engagement.
Founded 20 years ago, the NYC based studio consists of a team of experienced design, creative technology, project management, and operations professionals. Utilizing unique capabilities and creative process, they produce best-in-class, groundbreaking projects around the world.
About Stephen Baker
Stephen Baker is a creative director and designer focusing on experiential design spanning architecture, interaction design, and emerging technology. Stephen’s credits at LP include collaborations with the National Public Housing, Sydney Jewish Museum, IBM, Manchester United, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and more. Prior to joining Local Projects, Stephen developed an immersive mixed-reality pavilion for the Tokyo Olympics, a large, building-scale artwork for the San Francisco Symphony, a suite of live data visualization artworks for IBM’s headquarters, and a large-scale interactive visualization on Neuroscience for Columbia University. Stephen holds an MFA from Parsons School of Design in New York, and a BFA from the University of Michigan.
About Kate Watson
Kate Watson leads strategy at Local Projects — collaborating with clients to strengthen and define their vision, uncover fresh insights, and drive business. She started in the art world as a curator and critic before expanding into creating interactive experiences with cultural institutions and brands. Her work today spans user experience, project visioning, trend research, brand positioning, content strategy, and placemaking. She holds an MPS from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a BA in art history from Sarah Lawrence College.
More Upcoming Lectures
Nov 11 at 5:30pm • Kemper Art Museum
Roots and Rhizomes: Relational Networks in the Art of Carolina Caycedo
In 2022, Carolina Caycedo stewarded the planting of an indigenous shadbush tree in a community garden in New York City’s East Harlem (El Barrio). This living organism, whose metaphorical seeds grew from Caycedo’s ongoing “Genealogy of Struggle” series, inspires Susanna V. Temkin’s exploration of the artist’s work within larger relational networks. Expanding ecological and symbolic concepts associated with roots, seeds, and branches, Temkin considers connections within Caycedo’s practice and across broader art histories of the Americas. In particular, Temkin will address connections to other artists in Caycedo’s work, along with broader histories of protest, ecofeminism, solidarity, and resistance.
This talk is presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots”, as well as the forthcoming presentation of Confluencias at El Museo del Barrio, New York (originated at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo).
About the Speaker
Susanna V. Temkin is an art historian and the interim chief curator at El Museo del Barrio, where she has worked since 2018. Temkin earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where her research focused on modern art in the Americas, with a concentration on Cuba. At El Museo, her curatorial credits include the museum’s fiftieth anniversary exhibition, "Culture and the People" (2019), “La Trienal” (2020, 2024, and forthcoming 2027 edition), and the recent monograph of photographer Sophie Rivera (2026), among others. Prior to El Museo, she served as assistant curator at Americas Society in New York, as well as the research and archive specialist at the Cecilia de Torres Ltd., where she assisted in co-authoring the digital catalogue raisonné of artist Joaquín Torres-García. Temkin contributed essays to several exhibition catalogues and publications and is currently serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture.