Faheem Majeed

Co-director - Floating Museum

Faheem Majeed currently serves as one of four co-directors at Floating Museum, a non-profit arts organization that creates a new model for exploring relationships between exhibitions, public art, community, and public institutions.

Faheem is a builder—literally and metaphorically, using site-responsive art, design and programming to explore the potential in these relationships, considering the infrastructure, history and aesthetics of a space. A resident of the South Shore neighborhood in Chicago, Faheem often looks to the material makeup of his neighborhood and surrounding areas as an entry point into larger questions around civic-mindedness, community activism, and institutional critique. His work began at the South Side Community Arts Center (SSCAC), an organization underinvested in by the city and broader art community. As first a curator and then executive director, Faheem worked tirelessly alongside the community to address these obstacles and steer the Center towards continued expansion and improvement. The Floating Museum was conceived to bring art and cultural activities to multiple Chicago neighborhoods. For their 2017 project, “River Assembly,” the group transformed an industrial barge into a mobile gallery, bringing art and programming to sites around the city, reaching an estimated 100,000 viewers. “Cultural Transit Assembly,” their current project, is a public art activation of the CTA’s Green Line aimed to reach South and West Side residents. Beyond space and events, he believes in nurturing deep engagement with communities focused on mutually beneficial, sustainable partnerships between neighborhood spaces, municipal organizations, and larger cultural institutions.

Faheem blends his unique experience as a non-profit administrator, curator, and artist to create works that focus on institutional critique and exhibitions that leverage collaboration to engage his immediate and broader community in meaningful dialogue. At Floating Museum, he has a commitment to collective leadership, facilitation of public discourse, active listening, and generous community engagement. Faheem’s personal art practice has demonstrated a model of how to use art to facilitate and elevate important citywide conversations in areas like racial justice, access to cultural assets, and systemic disinvestment in communities.