ABOUT
Photo: Willa Koerner
Tal C. Beery (he/him/his) works in art, education, and nonprofit leadership at the nexus of culture and ecology. His projects – both independently and as a member of the artist collective Occupy Museums – have been exhibited in major venues across the US and Europe, including the 2017 Whitney Biennial, Brooklyn Museum, CCA Warsaw, and the 2012 Berlin Biennale, earning mentions in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Art in America, among others. Tal’s curatorial projects – “Owning Earth,” “Sinking Cities,” and “Land and Time” – spotlight interdisciplinary responses to complex environmental issues amid ecological uncertainty.
Tal received his MFA at SUNY Purchase, where he was a Windgate Fellow. He was a LABA Fellow in 2017. As a CANVAS Fellow in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, he transformed the public facing facade of the Jewish Museum of Maryland into a site for collective mourning. He was an artist-in-residence at Strange Foundation (Andes, NY), Marble House Project (Dorset, VT), and Craigarden (Elizabethtown, NY). In 2017, Tal was a participant of Art in a Time of Interregnum, an advanced course on art and social change, organized by BAK at Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design.
Tal has delivered lectures on art and social change at the Museum of Modern Art, Vrij Universiteit Amsterdam, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP), and New York University. Tal’s articles on the impacts of arts funding models on cultural institutions have appeared in Art Papers, Temporary Art Review, Cura, Strike Art, and other publications. From 2016 to 2018, Tal was founding faculty at School of Apocalypse, a platform for interdisciplinary collaborations exploring creative practice and survival.
Tal is the co-founder and Managing Director of Arts & Ecology Incorporated, a nonprofit that supports efforts by artists and organizations to create work that explores the connections between nature and culture. From 2010-2019, Tal was co-founder and program director of Eco Practicum, a desk-free school for ecological justice offering hands-on educational experiences to undergraduate and graduate students. He delivered workshops on natural resource policy, environmental ethics, systems thinking, and art and activism. From 2020-2023, Tal served as Chief Development Officer and Interim Co-Executive Director of the Hurleyville Performing Arts Centre, an arts venue in the Catskills, NY, where he led a staff of 22 and elevated programming to tackle critical social issues, including mental health and addiction, racial justice, Indigenous rights, and senior services. As partner in a boutique consulting firm from 2017-2019, Tal served NYC-based nonprofit clients, helping them raise more than $20 million in grant funding for refugee services, youth arts education, food justice education, mental health counseling, senior housing, and teen workplace readiness.
Tal currently serves as a member of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, a planning committee member of Critical Practices, Inc., and a core member of Education Ecologies Collective. He is an advisor to The Black Library, a community art space celebrating Black history and culture.
Contact: talbeery [at] gmail.com