Matt Connolly (b. 1985) is an artist and the co-founder and Artistic Director of Equitable Vitrines. 

Equitable Vitrines is a Los Angeles 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that produces exhibitions and educational programming. Our work is based upon the conviction that art is valuable because it facilitates the emergence of new aesthetic and discursive forms. We believe that new forms are required to enhance humanity’s self-understanding in this era of unprecedented, technologically-mediated change.

Considered in this way, art’s capacity to serve the common good is diminished when our relationship to it becomes rote or overdetermined. We are concerned that claims made about art from within the “art world” are not salient or even coherent when considered from an outside perspective. Equitable Vitrines creates situations in which the production and reception of artworks can take place unencumbered by prevailing assumptions about what art is or does.

Although our approach varies from project to project, we operate according to some general rules: we produce exhibitions in idiosyncratic spaces, and encourage the artists with whom we collaborate to consider how a given site is (and has been) used. In every phase of our work, we actively solicit input from non-practitioners. We attempt to maintain conditions in which the successful realization of a project (an art exhibition) is not a foregone conclusion. By proceeding in this manner, we remain open to what art might become.