Kim Cosier is Professor of Art Education in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she has been happily teaching since 2001. She is a member of the activist art collective the Art Build Workers and she is founder and director of the Milwaukee Visionaries Project, an award-winning media production/literacy program for urban youth. With her wife, Josie Osborne, she is also a founder of ArtsECO, a program that develops teachers as change-makers backed by a strong and sustainable community of arts organizations, non-profits and K-16 school partnerships. She believes in the power of art and the human imagination to create a more just and joyful world.
Her research and teaching interests focus on art and education for social justice, particularly related to intersecting cultural and social factors including gender, race, sexuality and class. She has published 2 books and numerous articles on these subjects including: Transforming City Schools Through Art, Rethinking Sexism, Gender and Sexuality, which won several awards including an American Library Association Stonewall Award, This is What Democracy Looks Like, On Whiteness and Becoming Warm Demanders, and What Can Art and Art Education Do in the Perilous Present? She is also a member of a performance troupe called Big Gay Church, which has been joyfully stirring up trouble at the National Art Education Association annual conference for the past decade. Cosier lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her wife Josie and dog Joey.
Photos courtesy of Joe Brusky
Kim Cosier, painting a banner
Teacher Power, 24′ parachute design
Black Lives Built This, linocut 8″ x 10″
Event photos by Jenny Stern
Dr. Kim Cosier Art Build Workshop
