A Blade of Grass is pleased to announce Prerana Reddy as our new Director of Programs.
Prerana joins ABOG from the Queens Museum of Art where she served as Director of Public Events, organizing screenings, performances, discussions, and community-based collaborative programs and exhibits. At the Queens Museum she also developed an intensive arts and social justice program for immigrant youth and a community development initiative for Corona, Queens residents.
Prerana is a Douglass Redd Fellow, awarded by the Ford Foundation to leaders in the fields of culture and community development. She is also a documentary filmmaker and researcher whose work has explored such topics as alternatives to juvenile detention, the history of slavery in New York City, and the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai.
On Prerana’s appointment, ABOG Executive Director Deborah Fisher commented: “A Blade of Grass nurtures socially engaged art by both directly supporting artists who are making social change in communities, and creating engaging, thought-provoking content about their projects. Prerana brings a truly unique skill set to this position and we feel she will be a perfect fit.
“We will depend on her hands-on community engagement and event production skills, as well as her deep knowledge and curatorial experience with socially engaged art projects and her background in documentary film. I really look forward to collaborating with Prerana to increase our audience engagement and enhance the content we produce with artists.”
“I am honored to join A Blade of Grass, an organization that shares my belief in the power of artists in envisioning and creating more equitable societies,” said Prerana. “Over the past fourteen years working at the Queens Museum, I’ve helped it engage in long-term cultural organizing work locally while also creating a platform for social practice artists to exhibit and advance their work. In that time, I came to appreciate the work of ABOG for bringing greater rigor and visibility to the field of socially engaged art, which is so critical to its continued sustainability and growth. I look forward to working with the team in developing compelling new programs and content that examines and amplifies the social impact and aesthetic innovation of these artists’ work.”
Prerana will oversee ABOG’s Fellowship program, documentary film and web content production, extensive public programming schedule, and other initiatives that expand understanding of socially engaged art.