For its third iteration, the 2025 Summer Think Tank explores the role of performance art within our understanding and stewardship of American art at-large. Taking a wide view of our contemporary arts ecology, the think tank invites participants to contemplate performance in relation to practices of archiving, documentation, exhibition-making, collecting and pedagogy as they take place within the museums, universities, galleries and other alternative spaces.

This year, we have invited six of the leading curators, artists and scholars working in performance to serve as guest curators. Each curator is assigned a week of the think tank and is responsible for assembling a cohort of interlocutors and cultivating a specific prompt or question to guide their conversations. All of the conversations that unfold during the think tank are recorded and eventually published as part of our audio archive, which will be launched this Spring. For the first time since its inception, the 2025 Summer Think Tank will also feature a series of public programs, consisting of live performances, film screenings and workshops developed and presented by the participants, which will provide the Colby Museum’s audiences with a unique opportunity to learn from the think tank as it’s happening. Programs will be held on Thursday afternoons at Lunder Institute’s Greene Block + Studios in downtown Waterville.