● Program Overview

Tuesdays, 12-1pm ET, 2x / month

Curator, author, and TAAS founder Nato Thompson leads focused workshops for artists who want to strengthen their work, deepen their thinking, and become more intentional about the choices they make in their practice.

Each session takes up a practical or conceptual question artists regularly confront: How do you build a practice that sustains you? How do you allow yourself to grow alongside your practice? How does collaboration affect your process? How do you recognize what is working and what needs to change? How do you move closer to the dream art promises? How do you take risks, work through uncertainty, and continue developing over time?

Drawing on contemporary art, art history, cultural life, and Thompson’s decades of working with artists, the workshops combine discussion, examples, exercises, and opportunities to apply ideas directly to your own practice.

The emphasis is not on following a prescribed career path. It is on becoming a more perceptive, resourceful, and confident artist: sharpening your skills, expanding the ways you think about your work, and developing the tools to keep pushing it forward.

These workshops sit alongside the School’s skills-based classes, professional development sessions, critique, and peer cohorts, creating a deeper and more sustained environment for artistic growth.

Sharpen Your Practice with Nato Thompson

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Meet the Instructor

Nato Thompson is a curator, author, and cultural strategist based in New York and Philadelphia, known for his influential work at the intersection of art, politics, and public engagement. A champion of socially engaged art, Thompson has held a curatorial role at MASS MoCA and was Chief Curator of Creative Time, where he produced landmark projects such as Kara Walker’s A Subtlety, Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot, and Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures.

He is the Founder and Director of The Alternative Art School, an online global platform connecting visionary artists through accessible, artist-led education. His writing has appeared in major publications including ArtForum, Huffington Post, and Art Journal, and he is the author of Seeing Power and Culture as Weapon.

Thompson holds degrees in Political Theory from UC Berkeley and Arts Administration from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He continues to work with leading contemporary artists and institutions to reimagine the role of art in shaping community and culture.

Nato Thompson

Curator, WRITER & educator
● Program Overview

Frequently Asked Questions

  • TAAS is for artists, curators, makers, and doers at every stage of their artistic life. Many of our members already have undergraduate or graduate art degrees. We believe strongly that this mixed-level experience is an incredible opportunity.

  • The uniqueness of TAAS is that our instructors are often working artists and curators with complex schedules, therefore you’ll see amazing artists come, go and return from quarter to quarter.

  • TAAS is not accredited — intentionally. We believe the most valuable art education happens in dialogue with working artists and curators, not through institutional checkboxes.

  • TAAS operates on Zoom embedded in a networking software that operates as our digital campus. The platform includes a variety of messaging options, profile pages for artists to represent themselves and their work, and clubs in which they can host break-out sessions outside of classes.

  • The Alternative Art School uses Mighty Networks as our online campus and platform. This media-based learning environment allows artists to collaborate, upload their work, and share across vast distances.

  • TAAS is an online school and students need access to a dependable wifi network and a desktop or laptop computer with a working webcam and microphone. Some students find Direct Ethernet cables helpful to boost connectivity if their wifi networks are unstable.

  • While TAAS is not a non-profit, we have a fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, that accepts donations on our behalf and offers a tax-deduction for all donations. We certainly encourage those with means and a big heart to support this initiative (see “Support” tab to donate.)